


Ces Jeux Méchants

by tartanroyaltea



Category: Loki - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: BAMF Darcy Lewis, Drama, Exile, F/M, Friendship, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Has Issues, Love Games, Magic, Manipulation, Romance, SHIELD, Seduction, Slow Burn, mischief and mayhem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tartanroyaltea/pseuds/tartanroyaltea
Summary: Amora the Enchantress and Loki have a long history of competitiveness, and the small fact of Loki being exiled to Earth without his magic isn’t going to stop Amora throwing down the gauntlet. Irritated after centuries being jilted by Thor, Amora challenges Loki to seduce Thor’s mortal woman, the physicist, certain that the Crown Prince of Asgard will finally turn to her. In exchange for seducing Thor’s woman, Amora promises to extract a favour from her seidr tutor Karnilla, Queen of the Norns, the only person in the Nine Realms with the ability to overturn the Allfather’s sentence on his wayward second son.If only the Foster woman’s annoying, loud-mouthed assistant would stop distracting Loki’s eyes from the prize.*On Hiatus*





	1. What's Past is Prologue

“Do play nice, dear. Please.”

Loki could not help but sputter slightly, completely ruining the finely-honed air of devil-may-care arrogance that he had cultivated throughout his numerous meetings-cum-trials-cum- demonstrations of Asgardian ‘justice’ (ha!) in the Allfather’s presence.

Loki glowered, clenching his shackled fists and ducking his head ever so slightly in acquiescence to Frigga’s quiet plea. Damn the Allfather, bringing forth the one person whom Loki could never despise.

“Of course, my Queen. I always play nice with the darling little mortals. They are just like the toy figurines I played with as a boy after all, so small, so _fragile_.”

“Enough, Loki. It is Frigga whom you have to thank for this lenient ‘punishment’, if it even may be called so. Without her intercession you would be treading a cell ten feet by twelve feet for the rest of your miserable days. Instead, you have a chance to make reparations for your crime-”

Loki laughed. Not a pleasant laugh, but the sort that would have made most people wish to crawl out of their own skin and slink away to safety, far away from the maniacal glint in the God of Mischief’s eyes. Thankfully, the Allfather was not ‘most people’, and he was well-used to Loki’s theatrics at this point.

“My crime? Are you referring to my desire to herd the Midgardian cattle into some sort of order? Surely that could only be considered as a…public service to the whole of the Nine Realms. The Midgardians do rather drag down the calibre-”

“ _Loki_ ,” his brother/not-brother growled from next to the throne, sounding all the world like his beloved thunder.

Odin sighed, thoroughly fed up. Frigga bit her lip, glancing anxiously between her husband and her beloved younger son. Something had happened to her sweet, thoughtful boy, and if she ever got a hold of the persons responsible, she intended to make Ragnarok look like mere child’s play. But, for now, her focus was on saving Loki from the despair that a life-sentence in the dungeons guaranteed. Without any interaction or stimulation, she knew that her high-spirited son would be driven quite demented. She could only hope that time on Midgard, aiding the warriors of this ‘Shield’ organization, would prove to be more beneficial. In any case, the Allfather had agreed to her suggestion after much debate, and she would _not_ stand by as Loki threw away his chance.

“I ask you to accept this offer, Loptr,” Frigga pleaded softly, gliding forward to gently touch her son’s hands. She had purposefully used her pet name for him, hoping that it would conjure fond memories of their many lessons and happy moments throughout the centuries.

Loki tore his eyes from the liar on the throne to meet his mother’s clear blue gaze. She was the one person on Asgard he could not deny, the one person he still desired to please. And she knew it.

“If it will please you, your Majesties,” Loki replied, taking a pointed step back from the Allmother and bowing as ostentatiously as his chains allowed. “I humbly accept your most _kind_ offer.”

“Very well.” The Allfather completely ignored his second son’s sarcasm and stood, gripping Gungnir.

“I, Odin Allfather, King of the Realm Eternal and Guardian of the Nine Realms do sentence Loki of Asgard to serve the organization of ‘Shield’ on Midgard for so long as it takes him to repent of his grievous crimes against the said realm.”

So said, Odin rapped the end of Gungnir thrice at the foot of the throne, and the sentence was passed. Loki smirked, immediately holding out his chained wrists in expectation.

Odin glared with his one good eye, and tapped Gungnir against the floor once again. Loki shuddered, his eyes widening and skin paling to bone white, all appearance of arrogance vanished. His heart hammered and his lungs gasped for air. His entire body shook like a leaf in the wind.

“What…what have you done to me?” He snarled, completely unbalanced. He could not feel his magic. It was not like the effect of the chains, which merely harnessed and contained his powers outside his reach. No, _this_ …his entire connection to the branches of Yggdrasil, the source from which he drew his magical abilities was…gone, completely severed. He felt nothing, not a single current of magic in the air, for all that he knew that every crevice, every pillar, of the throne room of Asgard hummed with it.

“Why, made you mortal, of course. Did you truly think I would unleash you upon the humans with your powers intact?”

Loki froze, fury crawling icily up his spine. He couldn’t decide if he was angrier at Odin for his trickery, or angrier at himself for not anticipating it. His time with the Tesseract had truly interfered with his mind, and even after almost a year of imprisonment, the effects of it lingered still.

He barely noticed the shackles unlocking from his wrists and throat, clattering onto the golden floor.

“Brother, truly it is not so-”

“Do not speak to me!” Loki hissed, barely containing the urge to bare his teeth like an animal. A look of hurt passed clearly across Thor’s face, but he made no more attempts at soothing his brother. Loki would soon learn for himself the many joys and oddities that one could enjoy as a mortal on Midgard, and with time, Thor was confident that his brother would return to his former state of mental stability and amusing tricks.

He hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is my first crack at the wonderful Darcy/Loki ship! I never would have thought to pair these two together, but I've read so many fantastic fics here on Ao3 that focus on this pairing, and I've been completely converted! I do hope you enjoy my own take on Tasertricks, but if you're looking for others, may I recommend a browse through my Bookmarks? There are plenty of amazing options in there.
> 
> Anyway, let me know your thoughts so far! I'll upload Chapter One tomorrow, as this Prologue is just a little amuse- bouche :)


	2. All Questions, No Answers

“What’s with the extra desk?” Darcy asked, for the third time, her voice raising to a pitch that even her 94-year old great grandmother may actually have been able to hear. All the way from Chicago.

The brilliant Dr Jane Foster (currently decorated with an interesting mirage of coffee stains down the front of her 4-sizes too large t-shirt) swatted a frantic hand around her head as if she was trying to chase off a bug.

A bug named Darcy Lewis, also known as ‘The Physics Intern Who Knows Next to Nothing About Physics.’

But while she wasn’t any closer to gaining a doctorate in a field of ‘actual science’ (nor even her Bachelor’s in Poli-Sci), Darcy did know a thing or two about the optimum scientific conditions of their lab- the sweet digs in the Triskelion that Fury had set Jane up with after rather rudely shipping them off to Tromso for no good reason bar: Thor was worried.

Number One: Jane did not appreciate noise. No sir, not a peep. Breath too loud, too close to her brainy brilliantness and you’d be likely to get a screwdriver thrown at your head. Or an empty coffee mug.

Which loops nicely into condition Number Two: COFFEE. The golden bean, the caffeinated Holy Grail. Jane couldn’t function without it- Darcy knew that it was right up there with oxygen as far as her nutty friend was concerned.

And so, with this knowledge in hand, in addition to a little tray containing one Extra Large Americano (no sugar, just a small splash of milk so it didn’t melt Jane’s teeth off) and her own skinny caramelatte, Darcy tiptoed towards the physicist in its natural habitat.

She stood nice and close to Jane, discreetly popping the lid off the Americano and mentally counting the seconds it would take for Jane to sniff out the coffee and drop the weird little doodad currently occupying space in her hands and her mind.

10…9…8…7…

“Ooh, coffee?” Jane practically purred, her previously bowed head popping up like a jack in the box.

Darcy immediately moved the tray to her other hand, far out of Jane’s reach.

“Yes. I have an Americano here with your name on it, but you’re only getting it if you do two little things for me,” Darcy warned.

Jane pouted ever so slightly, but nodded in agreement, her Bambi-brown eyes fixed on the coffee cups.

“Ok. First, set down that thing you’re holding,” she said, gesturing towards the weird, star-shaped piece of (probably dangerous and very illegal) equipment in Jane’s hand.

“It’s not a _thing._ It’s a quantum-bypass –”

“It’s a _thing_ ,” Darcy countered firmly. Jane set said thing down with precise care on the table top.

“Good girl. Now onto number two: what’s with the desk?” At that point, Darcy could barely control her impatience. In her defence, she _had_ asked the question four times now, and she was damned if she was going to leave work today without a solid answer.

Jane glanced at the desk nestled unobtrusively in a far corner and gave a limp shrug of her shoulders. For a split second, Darcy assumed that Jane wasn’t going to say anything more on the topic, and considered pouring the Americano down the drain while her physicist friend watched and wept.

But luckily, such villainy wasn’t necessary.

“Oh, that. We’re getting a helper, apparently,” Jane explained, as if it was no big deal.

“A _helper_? For what? Why do we need a helper?” Darcy struggled to keep the concern out of her voice. _She_ was the helper, the official reader of data and bringer of food and hot beverages.

“Not an intern, Darce. Why would I need one of those when I already have the best?” Jane smiled. Although Darcy knew that it was just her coffee cravings talking, she had to try very hard not to turn into a big pile of mush at Jane’s compliment.

With an eye roll, she pulled a stool alongside Jane’s and handed over the coffee. After a few sips of her own drink of sugary-milky goodness, Darcy ploughed on.

“Ok, so what exactly will this helper be doing? And who assigned them, anyway?”

“Fury. And apparently this guy is a real genius in quantum physics and will have some really incredible insights that will help us make huge gains on the Bi-frost project,” Jane babbled, in between gulps of coffee.

Darcy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Jane sounded like she was reciting from a pamphlet, a very official, glossy pamphlet most likely created by a certain P. Coulson.

“‘This guy’? Is that just his first name, or all of it?” she asked, heavy on the sarcasm.

Jane shrugged again, but her face looked just a little…guilty.

“Um…I don’t actually know. But I said yes.”

“Jane!”

“What? I know SHIELD are pretty shady, but they’re really invested in this project, and if they say this guy is a genius, I’m sure he is-”

Darcy snatched away Jane’s coffee. She was going to require full attention right now.

“Jane! So not the point! You said yes to some randomer coming into the lab and working with us every day!”

“‘Randomer’? Darcy, he’s just a fellow physicist who’s probably really excited to be working on a project of this magnitude! Besides, I really do need the help of another scientist, and I don’t think Erik is going to be up to anything like this for a long time.”

Darcy bit her lip. Poor Erik hadn’t been the same since that business with the brainwashing…and working on anything space-science related didn’t exactly give him the relaxation he sorely needed. It had been a rough couple of years for the guy, but for the minute he was living it up in an isolated farmhouse in Sweden, far away from superheroes, aliens, and Norse Gods.

“This guy, who we know _nothing_ about and who will be spending a minimum of eight hours with us every day could be a nutcase! Or a murderer! Or-” Darcy leaned closer, dropping her voice to a whisper, “-a Republican!”

Jane rolled her eyes at the intern’s fondness for dramatics. At worst the new guy in the lab would be so painfully shy around women that he struggled to speak in front of them. She doubted he would meet Darcy’s dire expectations.

“Only one way to find out. He starts tomorrow,” Jane said, taking Darcy’s literal jaw-drop at that news as a chance to retake her coffee. Cup in hand, she quickly scuttled towards the door with a gleeful look on her face, and almost bumped into-

“Thor!”

Darcy popped out of her shocked reverie to see the Asgardian labradoodle grinning widely and lifting a giggling Jane into the air. They were so nauseating. And kind of cute.

“Hey big guy, what’s up?” Darcy called, not really expecting her greeting to pull the lovebirds apart. But to her surprise, Thor carefully lowered Jane back onto her feet, and looked up at Darcy, smiling.

Darcy frowned slightly. That wasn’t Thor’s usual smile. She had seen the patented, mega-watt God of Thunder dazzler a hundred times, but today something in Thor’s expression was…off.

Actually, if Darcy hadn’t known any better, she would have accused Thor of looking _guilty._

But that couldn’t be right. It wasn’t Jane’s birthday, or their anniversary, nor a public holiday of particular (American) significance, so he couldn’t be looking guilty because he’d forgotten his boyfriend duties again. His face when Darcy had explained to him the importance of Valentine’s day last year had been a picture. Maybe because that conversation had taken place on February 15th. Whoops.

“All is well, Darcy, thank you for enquiring. How do you fare?” The God of Thunder replied easily, wrapping an arm like a tree trunk around Jane’s shoulders.

“Same old, same old. How was the homecoming? Were there parades? Were you strewn with flowers by pretty maidens?” Darcy teased, enjoying the frown on Jane’s face and the bewildered expression on Thor’s.

Thor cleared his throat. “It was…most interesting. I was pleased to see my family and friends again, but I am even happier to have returned to Midgard once more,” he said, gazing fondly at Jane, whose face was similarly soupy-looking.

Honestly, he had only been gone for a week, and that was his first trip back to Asgard since he’d escorted his crazy brother to the Allfather Supreme Court over a year and a half ago. But Darcy couldn’t really blame the two idiots for being in love –though she hoped that a similar fate never befell _her_ \- and she knew that Jane still harboured big fears of Thor disappearing off the radar again and never coming back from Asgard.

Darcy knew that this fear, in part, fuelled her desire to build the Bi-frost replacement. While Asgard were steadily making repairs on their end, Jane was determined to build a quicker, more efficient version here on Earth that would allow her hunky honey to travel between the two worlds with ease. Apparently over-use of the tesseract was a big no-no, and it was too much to ask His Mightiness Odin to constantly transport Thor back and forth, even if he was officially titled ‘Defender of the Nine Realms’.

“You missed Earth coffee, right?” Darcy asked, grinning at the hopeful way Thor was eying up the remains of Jane’s Americano. _Good luck buddy, love only takes you so far._

“Indeed. It is most delicious. You do not happen to have a third, do you?” he asked, hopefully, following Jane towards their impromptu coffee table.

“No, sorry. I didn’t know you were coming back today,” Darcy replied, throwing Jane a reproachful look.

“I didn’t know either!” Jane retorted, hopping back up onto her stool.

“Whatever. You never tell me anything.”

Jane sputtered, nearly dripping more coffee onto her messy t-shirt.

“Yes, I do!”

“Oh _really_? When were you going to tell me about Creepy New Intern Guy?”

Jane huffed and rolled her eyes, not even dignifying that question with a response. Thor frowned, completely lost in their amusing banter.

“Of whom do you speak?” He asked, watching them both intently.

“Good question, Thor! Wish Jane had asked Coulson that one!”

Thor looked at Jane expectantly, bushy blonde eyebrows raised.

“Ignore Darcy. It’s no big deal; SHIELD are just hiring a specialist in quantum physics to work alongside me –sorry, _us_ \- on this project and Darcy’s getting all worked up over it-”

“Because we don’t know anything about him! He could even be an alien! Oh, no offense, dude,” Darcy laughed, waving a careless hand at Thor, who seemed to have blanched slightly.

Jane frowned, placing a tiny hand on Thor’s forearm. “Everything ok?”

Thor smiled uneasily down at her. “Yes. But I must speak to Director Fury immediately. I…I had forgotten…it is an important issue…I will see you this night, Jane!” He babbled, actually _babbled_ like a nervous teenage girl as he rapidly backed out of the lab, almost stumbling on his fantastical cape along the way.

There was stunned silence for a few minutes.

“Ok, I’m calling it. That was fucking weird, even for the Prince of the Aliens,” Darcy declared.

Jane just glared at her.

She was out of coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki will be back soon, I promise! Just wanted to have a peek at what's going on with our lovely Darcy (and Jane, of course). Who could the mysterious Creepy New Intern Guy be, I wonder?
> 
> On another note: I know exactly zero about the American college system, so I'm keeping Darcy stuck on intern-duty for a while longer. And, of course, good old Coulson is alive and well in this story. He was shish-kebabed by Loki, but made a curious and miraculous recovery. Timeline-wise, this fic won't be in keeping with most MCU plot lines beyond Avengers, so who knows what will happen?
> 
> Thanks for the feedback so far, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter :)


	3. Let it Go

“Darcy, we may have a problem.”

Stellar, just what anyone wants to hear from their boss at 11pm on a Tuesday night.

Darcy sighed, wishing she had ignored the call as she paused  _Game of Thrones_  and grudgingly gave Jane her full attention.

“Hey boss-lady, what up?”

Jane made a faintly manic laughing noise, and Darcy was quite sure she could hear the deep tone of Thor’s voice in the background, trying to placate her.

“ _What’s up?_ Well, I found out who our new colleague is!”

“Uh…ok. That’s good, I guess,” Darcy said, stuffing another handful of sweet-and-salt popcorn in her mouth. Yum.

“No, Darcy. It is not good!”

“Hmph, m’kay. Well, who is it?”

“Guess!” Jane cried, definitely crossing the line into hysterical. Thor’s bass rumbled louder on the line, begging Jane to calm herself.

“Um…Santa Claus? Like, I know you hate Christmas and all, and yes, it _is_ way too commercialised these-”

“It’s not Santa, Darcy! It’s Loki!”

Darcy immediately leapt up from her slump, cursing the air blue as her bowl of popcorn flew merrily in all directions and the remains of her glass of red wine spread like a bloodstain across the SHIELD-issued cream carpet. Talk about an ominous foretelling.

“Yo, sorry. Did you just say _Loki_? As in L-O-K-I? As in Thor’s crazy adopted bro who tried to take over the world last time he was here?”

“Yes, the very one,” Jane seethed, her voice shaking with anger. Thor’s voice had noticeably disappeared. “Apparently, Odin made a deal with Fury that Loki would ‘pay off’ his punishment by helping SHIELD in whatever capacity they needed-”

Darcy sighed and ran a hand through her messy hair. This was bad, on _so_ many levels. “Did Thor know?” she asked quietly, almost afraid to pose the question to her currently irate friend.

“ _Yes._ Well, he knew Loki would be working with SHIELD, or for SHIELD, whatever. But he assumed they’d have him in the combat unit, or working alongside the Avengers on missions, I guess because he’s Asgardian and basically impossible to kill-”

“But Fury wants him on house arrest?” Darcy supplied, having a keen idea of how the Director’s wily mind worked. No way in Hell would he be giving Loki free reign to run around the Earth and defeat (or join) the ‘bad guys’.

“Exactly.” Jane just sounded resigned at that point.

“And he placed Loki in our lab because he has a weird sense of humour and wants to fuck with Thor?”

“Oh, probably!”

Darcy heard Thor’s voice pick up again, but no amount of pressing the iPhone to her ear was helping her hear what was being said.

She heard Jane sigh again, and knew that the argument had wound down.

Darcy waited impatiently as Jane came back onto the line and filled her in.

“Apparently, Loki will genuinely be able to help us on the project better than anyone else. Thor says he’s a bit of a genius at navigating through the different realms, even without the Asgardian Bi-frost.”

Darcy face-palmed.

“And he’s coming tomorrow?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“Well, then! Enjoy your last night among the living, I guess!”

Jane laughed tiredly. “Ha, you too. See you in the morning, Darce.”

“Bye.”

Darcy set her phone down and stared at the mess on her floor; she was so not spending her last night alive cleaning that shit up.

Flopping back down onto the squishy sofa, she hit play on the remote and let herself drift back into the world of dragons and unnecessarily graphic sex scenes.

//\\\//\\\//\\\//\\\

If Loki could sum up the central theme of Odin’s punishment, he would have undoubtedly selected the word ‘indignity.’

As if being pounded into the floor of that gaudy Tower by a green creature more hideously muscled than Thor, actually being _beaten_ by that group of dim-witted outcasts in combat, _and,_ being escorted back to Asgard in chains and a muzzle weren’t humiliating enough. Apparently, the Allfather had decided the more humiliation, the better.

Most insultingly of all, he wasn’t even chained this time when Thor ‘escorted’ him through the Tesseract’s portal. Without his magic, or any sort of weapon bar his tongue, he was evidently considered perfectly manageable. By Asgardian standards, at least.

Midgard, however, was rather more cautious about re-welcoming their once Almost-King back. No sooner had he and Thor arrived on a secluded patch of frozen wasteland than a small flying ship became visible in the grey sky, slowly lowering to the ground a safe distance from them.

Thor’s grip was firm on his upper arm, as if he was likely to try and run for it. Mjolnir, firmly nestled in the Thunderer’s other fist, would have stopped him rather quickly, and he had no desire to test how easily the famed hammer could smash his mortal bones to dust.

With a screeching groan, a gap like a great maw appeared in the rear of the flying vessel, and a ramp gradually descended to touch the frozen ground.

Loki rolled his eyes theatrically as the ridiculous Man of Iron, in his equally ridiculous armoured suit, descended halfway down the ramp, waving a gauntleted hand in their direction.

“Come, brother,” Thor grunted, unusually grim faced. Loki would have assumed his brother would be delighted to be amongst his pathetic mortal friends once more, but if he was, he showed no outward signs of it.

“I am not your brother,” Loki grumbled lowly, having no choice but to move as Thor took off towards the SHIELD vessel. It sobered Loki to realise that, let alone being incapable of outrunning his not-brother, he was now also incapable of so much as escaping Thor’s strong grasp; his mortal frame was piteously weak in the face of Aesir might.

“‘Sup Rudolph? Where’s the godly get up, huh? You’re looking a little frayed round the edges, there,” the Man of Iron goaded, the face guard of his helm flipping up to reveal his ludicrous facial hair and sickening grin.

The moron’s words meant nothing to Loki, his thoughts even less…but the mention of his armour stung, if only a little. Odin had confiscated it as soon as he had arrived back in Asgard to answer for his so-called ‘crimes.’ It was a serious punishment all its own- Aesir armour, particularly that of a (former) Prince, was valuable beyond measure. Loki’s set had been wrought for his 500th name-day, when he was considered a grown man. The Allfather had commissioned the work of the finest smiths in the Nine, the secretive Sons of Ivaldi, to craft a magnificent set of armour wrought through with powerful seiðr, allowing extensive protection to the wearer and ensuring that the armour could match Aesir longevity. The armour not only protected the wearer, but could mend any damage to itself, as well as containing innumerable hidden compartments for stowing discreet weapons.

Loki’s armour was part of his fragile sense of self, part of his identity as prince of Asgard. He felt lost without it. Taking away his armour was Odin’s final declaration: _You are not Aesir, you do not deserve our honours. You are not one of us._

Fuck him. Fuck them all.

Thor, after a brief nod to the Man of Iron, dragged Loki further into the berth of the ship, where the other 'Avengers' waited to greet them.

Loki decided that he would have preferred to be left outside to die in peace.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

"What time is it?"

"About thirty seconds after the time I just told you," Jane replied, with a surprising amount of sass. On any other occasion Darcy would have been proud, but today, she was too on edge to feel any clear emotions.

She was also too wound up to drink her coffee, which had grown stone cold as she persisted in asking Jane the time every few seconds.

Loki hadn't even arrived and he was already ruining everything.

"Great. Thirty seconds closer to his royal craziness killing us both with just a glare," Darcy sighed,  slumping forward onto her desk and burying her head beneath her arms.

"They're late," Jane remarked, after several minutes of tense silence.

"Mmmhmmm."

Jane’s chewed-up fingernails tapped on the desktop. "Fury's never late."

"Bet it's the aliens."

“We try not to use that word too judiciously around here, Miss Lewis,” came a cool voice. Darcy’s head shot up, her glasses falling skewed on the bridge of her nose. Director Fury watched her with faint amusement from the open doorway, offering a token nod at Jane.

“Dr Foster.”

“Morning, Director,” Jane replied, equally as calm.

Fury managed a slight chuckle, coming further into the lab. “I understand why it isn’t a ‘good’ morning, but I wanted to come ahead of the others to assure you that both of you will be perfectly safe. Loki has been neutralised-”

“Huh? Neutralised? How?” Darcy interrupted, patting down her rumpled sweater. Fury raised a sardonic eyebrow at her interjection, but answered nonetheless.

“According to Thor, the _King_ of Asgard has removed Loki’s magical abilities as well as his Asgardian status. In effect, he is as mortal as any of the three of us.” Fury’s tone conveyed just how strongly sceptical he was of this information.

Darcy snorted, equally perturbed.

Jane irritably butted in. “If Thor says Loki’s mortal now, then he is. We already know that Odin can do that, since that was how Thor ended up down here in the first place.”

Darcy had to concede that that was true. But it didn’t stop her being wary of Loki. He may only be a man now, but he wasn’t a mouse; he could still hurt both of them. She pointed this out to Fury, who nodded sagely.

“Loki has been fitted with an electronic monitoring tag-”

“He’s on house-no _lab_ \- arrest?” Darcy guffawed, receiving yet more disapproving looks.

“This tag prevents Loki from leaving the Triskelion. He’ll be lodging on the same floor as Thor, and the other Avengers. The tag can also be utilised by the four agents who will be stationed just outside this lab,” Fury continued, gesturing to the two corridors running alongside the lab’s four glass walls, “If Loki makes any threatening move towards either of you, he’ll have fifty thousand volts of electricity putting him to sleep before he can blink-”

Darcy gasped. “You can _kill_ him?”

Jane threw her hands in the air. Fury sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t mean ‘put to sleep’ in the sense of a rabid dog, Miss Lewis, although the idea does have its merits. The shock will be sufficient to make him pass out. Obviously, we hope that such a situation does not occur. If it does, our deal with Asgard is off. Both Thor and Odin are aware of this.”

Jane nodded, chewing on her lip. Darcy still didn’t feel overly comforted.

“I’m keeping my own taser fully charged all the same, Director,” she said, patting her jeans pocket for reassurance.

Fury looked bemused. “A sound idea, Miss Lewis.”

Before Darcy could run her mouth any more, Fury pressed a finger to his earpiece, his face growing solemn.

“Roger that.” He glanced between Jane and Darcy.

“They’ll be here in a few seconds. They’re just exiting the elevator.”

Jane grimaced, and Darcy felt her own stomach clenching with anxiety. This was insane. _Insane._ What the hell were they supposed to say to this guy?

_“So nice to meet you in the flesh at last. We kind of met that one time you sent your robot thingy to barbeque the town we were staying in… How was your flight?”_

Darcy never struggled to talk; her tongue had never been quelled by anyone. But she was truly at a loss with how to handle this entire, fucked up situation.

 Before she could come up with an answer, the sound of footsteps echoed down the metallic hallway leading to the elevators. Darcy could hear the low rumble of Thor's voice, which immediately made her mind flash back to the previous night, when all of this craziness had started and her simple, safe little world had been rudely flipped upside down.

She craned her neck for a better view of what was to come, unable to stop the small smirk that instantly appeared at the sight of the two solemn SHIELD agents leading the pack. They wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Men in Black.

Agent 1 and Agent 2 separated just before the door of the lab, allowing Thor to pass through into the monochromatic room in a blaze of gold and red.

The God of Thunder cast a sheepish, almost shy smile at both Darcy and Jane.

"Jane, Darcy. Good morrow."

Jane offered a quiet "hey" in reply with a sweet smile. Evidently Thor had redeemed himself after the previous night's little tiff.

Darcy nodded to Thor's greeting distractedly, because she was, frankly, barely paying attention to him at all; her eyes were glued to the man standing next to him. Thor’s baby bro. The guy who almost destroyed the sad little town of Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. The one with the green cape and crazy horns who ripped out some poor German man’s eyeball, and tried to take over the entire world with the help of an absolutely terrifying alien army. The guy who had broken Thor’s heart at least three or four times in the past couple of years. The guy who stabbed Coulson through the heart with his magic sceptre of doom.

Loki.

In the flesh. The real deal.

He stood to Thor's left, but slightly behind him, his posture emphasising how much he did not want to be in the building, let alone the lab. He was just a shade shorter than his brother, but far slighter, which combined with the noticeable slump in his shoulders made him appear on the small side. His hair was longer even than Thor’s, falling in a wavy, dark tangle beneath his shoulders. The artificial lighting of the lab enhanced the ghostly pallor of his skin and the sharp angles of his face, lending him an air of untouchability- of ‘otherness’.

But aside from those cheekbones and that snow-white skin, Loki didn’t cut a particularly startling figure. He seemed…sunken in, or worn out. It was hard to believe that he was a mass-murderer with serious delusions of grandeur and theatrical fashion sense. He seemed deceptively...normal. 

Except...they really were amazing cheekbones. And his jawline was pleasingly sculpted, his nose perfectly straight.

His eyes were nice too, big and expressive, although she couldn’t properly make out the colour of them on account of her own piss-poor eyesight.

It took several, _really_ long seconds for Darcy to catch herself on.

_Was she actually admiring Loki?!_

She cursed the universe. This was bad.

No villain should be _that_ hot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Darcy and Loki together in the same room- now the fun can truly begin!


	4. Promises, Promises

In Loki’s eyes, the building named ‘The Triskelion’ was definitive proof that Midgardians were utterly worthless. It was undoubtedly the ugliest, least imaginative building he had ever seen in his millennium-long existence.

And that included the piteous ruins of that frozen hel, Jotunheim.

And, just to drive the dagger a little deeper, he was expected to both work _and_ live in the steel and glass monstrosity for the undefined duration of his ‘sentence’.

Wonderful. Truly _wonderful._

“You wish for me to spend every moment of my time… _here_ ,” Loki clarified, giving the room he was currently sitting in a slow look of disgust.

Fury’s one inky eye glared at him fiercely, clearly not impressed with his captive’s theatrics.

“Yes, I do. Consider it an extended prison cell, if you want. I know how much you enjoy the martyr act, but the fact is, you wouldn’t have this much leeway in Asgard. The parameters of this building are in the region of 750,000 square feet, and over a thousand rooms,” Fury expounded, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. He did not get paid enough to deal with this much alien shit.

Loki opened his mouth, no doubt ready with some winsome quip, but the Director cut him off.

“Not that you have access to most of those rooms, of course.”

Loki’s lips twisted into a smirk.

“Of course.”

“The rooms you need to be concerned with are as follows: your living quarters, where you will be escorted after this meeting; the ‘public’ areas, including restaurants and shops; training rooms, which you’re only allowed in when accompanied by the _other_ Prince of Asgard; and, finally, lab number 051, where you will be ‘paying off’ your many, _many_ crimes against this world.”

Even talking about the deal that the Council hashed out with his holiness the King of Asgard and Nine other worlds (apparently) pissed Fury off, but it wasn’t his call to make. He just had to keep his eye on the asshole sitting in front of him.

Said asshole’s forehead wrinkled, his expression somewhere between confused, surprised, and maybe even a little bit disappointed.

Fury tried very hard not to smile.

“I am to work in a laboratory? With scientists?” Loki had expected to be unceremoniously lumped with his former enemies, the Avengers, on their ridiculous ‘missions.’ He had been quite certain that both Odin and Fury would think that placing him with the merry band of misfits and his oaf of a non-brother would be the finest punishment in the Nine.

“That’s exactly what you’ll be doing- five days a week, 9am until 5pm, starting tomorrow. I won’t bother going into details of the research you’ll be taking part in, I’ll leave that up to Dr Foster-”

Loki leaned forward, eyes glinting in a way that had Fury immediately reaching for the gun at his belt.

“You refer to _Jane_ Foster, do you not?”

Fury felt a vague unease ripple coldly through his body. While he had agreed to transporting Dr Foster and her assistant to Norway during Loki’s rampage the year before, he hadn’t actually believed that the Doctor was at much risk. He hadn’t even been confident that Loki was _aware_ of Dr Foster or her relationship with Thor. And that was why he hadn’t even thought to question the Council when they suggested, quite unexpectedly, to have Loki work on Foster’s project. It had seemed the logical choice; the perfect place to position a (supposedly) neutered alien with a (supposedly) advanced understanding of quantum physics.

Fuck.

He couldn’t – wouldn’t- let Loki see him tremble. Not a motherfucking quiver.

“I do. _Dr_ Jane Foster is one of SHIELD’s most promising new recruits. We think you’ll be a big help to her,” he said blandly, running his eye casually over a stack of papers on his desk.

Loki’s grin was like a knife blade.

“Perhaps not in the manner you intend, _Director,_ ” he drawled, thoroughly delighted by Fury’s palpable unease. “Is the oaf aware of the arrangement you have made between his paramour and myself?”

_Not a motherfucking quiver._

“Actually, I had every intention of speaking with Thor first when the quin-jet landed. Unfortunately, your brother flew off to see his…’paramour’ before I could request a meeting. I intend to speak with him while you’re being shown to your living quarters,” Fury glanced at his watch, “Which, incidentally, is scheduled for right now.” The Director signalled to the guard stationed in the corner of his office. The recruit spoke into a headpiece, and the office door opened as four other guards entered.

“Enjoy your stay with us, Mr Odinson. I hope that I won’t be seeing too much of you,” Fury concluded drily, not even bothering to get out of his chair.

“Likewise,” sneered the God of Mischief, sauntering towards his honour guard as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Well, he supposed he didn’t have a care in the world.

(He didn’t have _anything._ )

Unless said honour guard decided to activate the unflattering band around his wrist. As he had fastened it on, Thor had informed him of its various functions.

Loki had no desire to end up drooling on the squeaky-clean floors on his very first day.

And so, he walked quietly from the Director’s office, allowing the guards to guide him into the elevator- a contraption that proved the astounding laziness of the Midgardian population. Apparently, stairs were simply too much for them.

Pathetic.

The corridor they arrived on, 27C, looked exactly like the floor they had just left. In fact, Loki had yet to see a part of this building that looked remotely different. As far as he could tell, its 750,000 square feet were comprised only of endlessly long and immaculately white corridors.

Their little convoy stopped at a door (white, of course) labelled ‘17’.

One of the guards in front of him turned, nodding at his wristband.

“That opens the door to your rooms. Just put it in front of that scanner,” the man directed, in a steady monotone.

Loki rolled his eyes and dreamt of telling the guard to kindly fuck off.

But he desisted, simply doing as instructed.

If truth be told, he was _tired._ His mortal coil was weak, and required rest after the journey on the Bi-frost _and_ in the flying machine. He allowed himself to hope that his quarters were equipped with a decent bed. If he recalled correctly, the last prison cell he had been confined to on Midgard had only contained a sad, short little bench.

The door slid open slowly, and the two leading guards preceded him into the room.

Loki’s eyes roved quickly throughout the space, taking in the seating area and small kitchen. An open archway lead, he presumed, to sleeping quarters.

“This is the living room, with kitchen. Bedroom’s through there, along with the bathroom. Your rooms are on lockdown from twenty-two hundred hours until seven hundred hours. If you require assistance during this time, use this intercom,” the lead guard droned, gesturing to a device on the far wall, “Two guards will be stationed outside at all times. In the event of an emergency and/or evacuation during the hours of lockdown, they will escort you to safety. You are not permitted guests in your rooms apart from those who are preapproved by Director Fury. Do you understand?”

Loki wondered if the man would repeat the same breathless diatribe if he simply responded: ‘no’.

But he really wanted to sleep.

“ _Perfectly._ Now, if that will be-”

The sound of thunder rumbled down the corridor.

“LOKI!”

Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh for fuck-”

The source of the noise suddenly bounded into the room, red cape swinging. “Brother, we must speak!”

“-sake!”

The guards, who had remained completely blank throughout the brief tour with the God of Mischief, stirred slightly as Thor strode past them without a glance.

Loki looked to the head guard and asked facetiously: “Does _he_ have clearance to be in here?”

“Yes.”

Loki sighed. There really were no positives.

“Brother, we must-”

“Speak. Yes. You _are_ speaking, you know. At least I assume that the sounds you make are intended as speech,” Loki replied acerbically, walking over to a promising-looking couch and dropping himself onto it. He stretched out his weary bones and threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the stark glare of the room’s lights.

If only he were able to block out of sound of Thor’s thudding footsteps as he paced in circles.

“It is important.”

“Of course.”

“Director Fury has told me-”

“That I am to be working alongside your Jane in her quest to create a Midgardian Bi-frost. Yes. I know. He just told me,” Loki filled in irritably. As much as he liked the idea of riling Thor, he had had quite enough of _people_ in general for one day. He almost missed the solitude of his Asgardian cell.

Thor let out a small cry of frustration. “Loki, _please._ I know that you still bear me ill will but I am asking you- please do not harm Jane.”

Loki chuckled drily. “Harm her? Now why would I want to do anything of the sort to your little wench? Apparently she is rather intelligent, for a mortal. What _does_ she see in you?” he mused, opening his eyes to better enjoy Thor’s discomfort.

Thor’s grip on Mjolnir tightened.

“You have threatened her in the past-”

“Oh, _that_ ,” Loki drawled, waving a hand in the air. “All water under the _bridge_ , brother,” smiling maliciously as he stood, Loki took a few seconds to savour the look of fear and anxiety on Thor’s face. It was nice to be feared, perhaps even more so now that he felt so truly helpless.

Yes, very nice indeed.

“Now, if you will _all_ ,” he glanced at the group of enraptured guards, “excuse me. I find myself feeling quite weary and… _mortal._ Good night.”

And with that, he strode to the bedroom, settling himself on the (reasonably-sized) bed, and wishing that the room had a door for him to slam.

He half-expected Thor to pursue the matter, to barge after him and swing that ridiculous hammer until Loki swore to be kind to the Foster woman.

Ha.

As if he would ever be kind to one of these creatures. They were beneath him. Although he could no longer deceive himself that he was a member of the great Aesir race, he was still possessed of skills and intelligence that the mortals could never _hope_ to understand.

When he had been born (and later abandoned) their ancestors had been primitive creatures, praying to the Aesir, their gods, for good harvests and safe voyages. For their kin to live. But, of course, the humans died in the blink of an Aesir eye. _That_ had scarcely changed in the past millennia.

And now, he, Loki, God of Lies, Mischief and Chaos had to live and work alongside a hive of mortals scarcely half a century old for an undefined period of time.

It could be months.

It could be years.

Decades, even.

He had no idea what Odin’s ultimate plan was.

The thought of that alone was enough to boil his blood.

His fate was in the hands of SHIELD.

In the hands of Odin.

He had spent an eternity in the hands of Thanos, whose grip remained on parts of his mind even now.

Loki shut his tired eyes, ignoring the coolness of the tears sliding down his temples.

He made himself a silent promise.

One day, he would get his magic back.

One day, he would get his life back.

One day, his fate would be his, and his alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a tricky one for me! Hence why it took a little over a week to get it published, for which I do apologise. As much as I adore Loki as a character, I do find his perspective much harder to write than Darcy's (a) because he is better established in canon and therefore easier to inadvertently make 'OOC', and, (b), Darcy is a slightly goofy 20-something university student (like me!) and Loki is as old as Viking dirt- climbing inside his mind is no picnic.  
> Anyway, let me know what you thought of this chapter. Next time, it's Darcy and Loki interaction at last!


	5. Flyte Me

 

 

Despite her initial mooning over Loki, Darcy came to a rather sobering conclusion on Friday afternoon: she was just a little, teensy-weensy bit disappointed with the God of Mischief who had been grudgingly delivered to Lab 051 on that Tuesday morning.

Darcy hadn’t expected to survive through lunch. Jane, she was quite certain, would be killed off before elevenses.

But nope. No murder, no mayhem. Not even a hint of mischief. _All week._

Loki was more like a gloomy little thundercloud, skulking and sulking in the corner of the room on a daily basis as Jane attempted to discuss the complexities of their study.

Actually, Darcy was _extremely_ disappointed.

Sure, she had been mildly terrified upon hearing that the crazy, horn-helmetted guy who tried to take over earth via New York with an army of cyborg thingies and flying wales was going to be working in their (okay, _Jane’s_ ) lab, but as the sleepless Monday night had worn on, she had also been…intrigued. So, she did a little bit of shoddy internet research and found out that this ‘Loki’ person sounded like the absolute King of Craic. Allegedly, he once dressed up as a pretty maiden with Thor and snuck into a giant’s lair to rescue Myuh-Myuh, _and_ he was, like, the _inventor_ of modern rap, which, back in the days of Vikingland, was known as ‘flyting’, a.k.a. cussing out a bunch of people at a big gathering.

But the best bit of news, in Darcy’s mind, was that Loki was apparently as much of a talker as she was. Alright, maybe he was a bit more judicious with the truth from time to time, but all in all he sounded like he’d be very entertaining to have around the lab, full of razor sharp quips and up for lengthy discussions of Netflix’s finest.

So, yeah, Darcy was a bit disappointed to discover that the godfather of rap, the forefather of Jay, ‘Ye and Dre, was like a cross between a mime and an emo.

For the first four days, he barely spoke a word. Not a single unnecessary syllable passed his lips. The only time he said anything was when Jane was lecturing him. Even then, it was hardly beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He didn’t even mouth along when Darcy boldly played a few Bey songs on her laptop without plugging the headphones in on Thursday. Although Jane certainly gave her an earful about it.

He didn’t speak when he was introduced to them on Day #1 by an uncharacteristically ruffled Thor, only offering them both a vague nod. His response when Darcy mustered up the courage to ask him directly if he wanted anything for lunch was a sharp shake of his head and zero eye contact. He didn’t speak when he arrived each morning or when he left every day at 5pm on the dot; he just appeared and disappeared without announcement.

Seriously, it was _on the dot_. Darcy was convinced that he had a hyper-accurate stopwatch secreted somewhere on his person.

Not that she would be conducting a search to find it. No, no, and _no._ Because feeling up her homicidal co-worker would be wrong. And fancying the pants off him was also wrong.

But some things are like Miley Cyrus: they can’t be tamed.

Loki, on the other hand, could do with a little _less_ taming, in Darcy’s professional opinion. (She took one elective in Psych and got a commendable B for her final grade, so she knew her shit.)

Maybe he had been completely tamed. To the point that he was damn near as unresponsive as a vegetable.

OK, that wasn’t really fair. Although Loki didn’t speak very much, he did communicate, in his own way. He was a bit like a baby (a comparison Darcy didn’t even dare _think_ in his presence for fear that he might magically overhear and throttle her), not quite verbal, but if you watched real carefully, and for long enough, you started to get a grip on what he was trying to tell you.

From all the eye-rolls, clenched jaws, curling fists, and deep sighs, Darcy felt it safe to assume that what he wanted to tell Jane and Darcy began with a big ol’ ‘F’ and ended with a decisive ‘U’.

Yep, Darcy was disappointed. But she was also determined. And over the weekend following The Week that Shook the Earth, Darcy decided, with the help of her friend Merlot,  that she was going to wear Loki down until he _had_ to speak to her- properly speak, as in hold an actual conversation. She knew perfectly well that his first words to her probably wouldn’t be very complimentary, but she didn’t care.

She needed a lab buddy capable of actual speech, and because Jane’s random little grunts and cheers didn’t really count, Loki was going to have to be that lab buddy, whether he liked it or not.

Ha. Maybe just referring to him as ‘buddy’ would be enough to unleash a healthy flyting.

Only one way to find out.

On Monday morning, it was going _down._

*

“Hey Loki, do you want a coffee?”

Yep, that’s how Darcy was going to wear him down. Via hot beverages. They were sort of her thing.

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than he was shaking his head distractedly, his eyes still glued to the data milling around on the computer screen in front of him.

Darcy was well aware that she was standing within Loki’s personal bubble, which unlike the average human ‘bubble’ of three feet, was more in the region of seven or eight feet (or miles, probably.)

But if Loki was bothered, he wasn’t showing it. So she sidled a little closer, her sneakers moving silently across the linoleum floor.

“How about tea, then? They have loads: herbal, chai…ooh! Earl Grey would kind of go with your accent!”

Darcy knew she was being annoying.

Loki knew she was being annoying.

But he damn well wasn’t showing it!

He just ignored her.

She moved closer. If she lifted her arm, she could easily touch his shoulder. Although, considering that she didn’t want to lose a hand, she had absolutely no intention of doing that.

“Loki! Hey, hello? Is anyone in there?” she chirped, clicking her fingers a safe distance from his head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jane glance up from her work bench, a frown set on her porcelain forehead. She was clearly making too much noise- and not getting the coffee fast enough- for her boss’s taste.

Darcy crossed her arms and began tapping her foot. He was _not_ going to win this one. No way.

“Look, I’m going to keep bugging you until you give me an answer- a _verbal_ one- so do yourself a favour and talk to me. Really, I’m nice to chat with.”

Nada.

Zilch.

Zip.

Darcy sighed. She hadn’t wanted to go this far.

“Fine. Be rude,” she sulked, edging away from him.

And right towards the big tangle of power cords a few feet away, her eyes tracing the vines that fed the juice to Loki’s computer.

Confident that she was well outside his peripheral vision, she slowly crouched down, ready to pull the plug-

“If you switch off this machine, the only person you will be upsetting is Dr Foster,” intoned a deep, cool voice that packed a subtle blend of boredom and disdain.

Darcy was so shocked that she jumped a little, falling over onto her side.

Loki’s head had turned slightly in her direction, and he calmly regarded her from the corners of his startlingly green eyes.

Darcy just sat on the floor, staring at him. That had to be the most she had ever heard Loki speak in one go.

“Darcy, are you okay?” Jane sounded concerned, but Darcy knew that if she had actually pulled the plug on Loki’s work her boss would have been _far_ from sympathetic.

Of course, Darcy also knew that SHIELD, the suspicious bastards, automatically backed up _every_ piece of data from the machines in their lab and kept it on their own super-top-secret databases.

But Jane, who may have been a genius but didn’t possess Darcy’s skills in hacking, wasn’t aware of the automatic backups that SHIELD operated. So she most likely would have completely overreacted and murdered Darcy. Which would have been a bit of a shame.

“Yeah, thanks chief,” she huffed, blowing a wayward strand of hair from her eyes and climbing back to her feet.

Loki’s eyes hadn’t permanently reattached to the computer screen, so she considered it a triumph for progress.

“So you can speak more than four words,” she couldn’t help but gloat, watching the God of Mischief with interest.

One of Loki’s very dark eyebrows rose slowly towards his hairline.

“I can speak millions of words, in several dozen languages. Many of which I suspect you have never heard of.” Damn. He was totally insulting her intellect, but between the velvety sound of his voice and that panty-dropping accent, it was mighty hard to feel sufficiently offended.

“Oh yeah? I’d kick your ass at Scrabble, no contest.”

_Way to sound like a seven-year-old, Darce!_

The raised eyebrow stayed in place.

“I can neither agree or disagree with you. I do not know what a ‘Scrabble’ is,” Loki demurred, his attention looking like it was tempted to drift back towards his work.

“It’s a word game. Basically each player gets a select bunch of letter tiles and the person to make the most complex words on the board wins. I’m the Scrabble Queen. Jane sucks at it.”

Loki seemed to mull this new information over.

“Is this game of yours played in English only?”

Darcy could hardly believe that he was still talking to her.

“Uh. I guess they have versions in other languages- not that I've ever played them, obviously. I only speak English. I did take Spanish for a year in high school but I _really_ sucked at it. I do remember some words though, like 'mochilla', I think that's a-"

“Rœðamórán.”

Darcy blinked at him

“Umm…bless you?”

The corner of Loki’s lips twitched slightly.

“That is a Ljósálfan word. The language of the Light Elves,” he added, clearly noticing her confused expression.

“Oh. Cool. What does it mean?”

Loki turned his head and looked at her steadily with those big green eyes. She couldn’t even begin to decipher what the expression on his face meant.

“Perhaps I will tell you… one day. If you swear to be silent forever more.”

Darcy chewed her lip, fighting back a grin. “So I’ll never know what it means, that’s what you’re saying?”

Loki shrugged, turning back to the computer.

But Darcy wasn’t finished.

“Well, in an English-only Scrabble game, I’d totally beat you.”

Loki just gave a non-committal humming noise, clearly back to his usually non-verbal self.

Darcy slowly backed away, not wanting to accidentally piss Loki off and ruin what had, actually, been a semi-civil conversation. He hadn’t rolled his eyes at her _or_ called her ‘mortal’!

_Miracles really do happen!_

She passed Jane on her way out to get the coffees.

Uncharacteristically, Jane set down her work and followed her into the corridor.

“What was that?” she whisper-shouted, gesturing back into their little greenhouse of a lab.

“What?” Darcy shrugged, glancing uneasily at the guards dotted around the corridor, large guns slung over their shoulders. She headed towards the lifts.

Jane scurried after her, pinching her arm excitedly.

“ _Ouch!_ What was that for?”

“He actually spoke to you! As in offered information about himself in response to information you had given about yourself! He _engaged_ with you! I’ve been trying to have conversations with him all week. It’s like pulling teeth.” Jane seemed totally in awe of her intern, her brown eyes wide.

“I know. I really wasn’t expecting to get much from him, but that was pretty good.” Darcy tapped the call button, hoping that the elevator didn’t take too long. Considering the size of the triskelion, and the huge number of people working in it, it was sorely lacking a decent system of elevators. Sure, there were plenty of back stairwells, but only the soldiers and superheroes were crazy enough to tackle _those_.

“ _Expected?_ You were trying to get him to talk to you?”

Darcy didn’t see any point in denying it.

“Well, yeah. I want to get to know him a bit better.”

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Darcy blinked at her in surprise. “Uh, well… he’s our colleague. It’s important to have a good working relationship. And, if I get him to open up, maybe he’ll give you more info-”

Jane gasped suddenly.

“Darcy Emilia Lewis! You have a crush on Loki!”

“Shhh! Keep your voice down! And stop being ridiculous!” Darcy hissed, swatting away Jane’s flapping hands.

“You’re blushing! You _do_ like him!”

“What are you, fifteen years old? I do not _like_ him. That was our first conversation. I’m just trying to be friendly.”

Jane grimaced. “Why? It’s only Loki.”

“So what?”

“He’s a mass murderer and barely-reformed psychopath. Please, Darcy, I think you should leave him well alone. He’s bad news.”

Darcy glowered at the little light-up numbers above the elevator doors. Still two whole floors away.

“You’re working with him,” she pointed out.

Jane huffed. “I didn’t have much choice in the matter. And besides, I’m just planning to mine his brain for data. I’m not trying to be his ‘friend.’”

Darcy did not appreciate Jane’s sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘friend’.

The elevator dinged, at last, and the doors opened to reveal an empty carriage.

“If you’re going to accept information from him, that shows a certain amount of trust. How do you know he’d even be honest with you if he did offer up useful information?” Darcy asked, stepping into the lift and turning to face her boss.

Jane’s arms were crossed, her body-language reading: sulky.

She didn’t have an answer to Darcy’s question. Maybe she’d never even considered it.

Darcy clicked the button for floor 2, the ‘shopping mall’ level.

“Don’t overthink this, Jane. Maybe Loki is just a big, murdery psychopath with absolutely no redeeming features. Maybe he’s messed up beyond repair. Or, maybe… he could really use a friend.”

The doors slid shut between them, and Darcy leant back against the mirrored wall of the elevator.

Why had she defended Loki so strongly?

She had only planned to annoy him, to crack that cold exterior he had been holding up since his arrival.

Now, apparently, she was trying to befriend him.

She clunked her head against the mirror and shut her eyes.

_I must be out of my mind._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, already? I can hardly believe it myself- this is very unlike me. It must be thanks to the great feedback I've received so far, keeping that writer's block at bay! As ever, let me know what you think :)


	6. From Worse to Worse

It could be worse.

That was his mantra. Day in, day out, that was what Loki told himself.

It could be worse.

He could have remained in confinement in the bowels of Gladsheim, with no outside contact and zero opportunities for a reprieve.

He could have been drifting in the endless forever of Middle Space, wrapped in silence and darkness as the galaxies swirled maddeningly by just at the edge of his vision.

He could have been in the clutches of Thanos and the Other, enduring repeated and creative tortures with only the briefest glimpses of future hope and glory dangled before his nose every time he reached the limits of his capacity for pain, both mental and physical.

Certainly, it could have been worse.

He had lived through worse. Stared in the face of _worse_ on several occasions.

Still, he wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was enjoying his enforced ‘vacation’ to Midgard.

He was simply enduring; doing the absolute minimum required in order to maintain an existence of some comfort while quietly watching for any opportunity to escape.

He was quite confident that such an opportunity would present itself, if only he could master his patience.

Unfortunately, Loki had to concede that patience wasn’t an inherent part of his personality, although in recent years he had become better at playing the long game- setting up a trick or deception in increments, waiting and watching as all the pieces slowly clicked into place.

But still, there was much to be said for instant gratification.

To be honest, he wasn’t getting any kind of gratification on Midgard- delayed or otherwise.

Everything was dull.

The building. The people. The work.

Dull, dull, and yet more dull.

He missed his library. He missed his seiðr. Without them, he felt absolutely bereft of enjoyment.

Loki knew that his personality was one that demanded stimulus; he needed new knowledge, needed to engage with the universe on _some_ level, but in the steel and glass prison of the Triskelion, he felt hopelessly unmoored.

They had no magic on Midgard, only 'science', a severely limited art form. If they had libraries, he didn’t have much hope of getting to see one.

The situation was getting so serious that he feared he may actually begin to crave interaction with others, an urge he had rarely experienced in the past five hundred years. His fear wasn't mitigated by the fact that in recent nights he had begun to have a peculiar, recurring dream where he stood in an unfamiliar room, staring at a shadow-shrouded figure, waiting for it to speak to him at last. It seemed clear that his subconscious was already desperate for some kind of social interaction.

In this prison, his only frequent 'conversations' were with Thor, Dr Foster, and his guards. Considering that the guards didn’t speak, he didn’t speak to Thor if he could avoid it, and Dr Foster only to spoke to him in the interests of picking any glimmer of knowledge from his mind, his social life was severely inhibited.

“Yo, Loki. Want the usual?”

Loki blinked, rapidly lifting out of his downcast reverie at the (uncommonly loud) sound of the assistant’s voice.

Ah, yes. Darcy. How had he forgotten about her? She was a bubbling well of social interaction, just waiting to spill all over him. Any time that an opportunity to engage him in conversation arose, she pounced on it, in spite of his many attempts to intimidate her into leaving him alone. She was apparently immune to coldness, arrogance, and being outright ignored.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, noting her lack of burdensome knitted garments and rather enjoying the glimpse that her ‘t-shirt’ gave of her shapely figure.

Loki assumed that she had ‘ditched’ her multitude of ‘sweaters’ because the temperature was increasing due to the emergence of Spring-time. He had heard his guards discussing this change of the seasons with the giddiness of youngsters as they planned ‘football’ tournaments and ‘barbeques’ with their wives.

Loki didn’t understand what the aforesaid past-times were, and he certainly didn’t care to find out, but the interest with which his guards catalogued the minutest increase in temperature and length of daylight hours intrigued him as much as it baffled him.

Having no opportunity to actually _go outside_ , Loki found it rather hard to care what kind of weather they were experiencing in Washington DC. The Triskelion was set at a consistent temperature every day.

Although…he did allow himself to wonder if the warmer weather would force Darcy to wear more and more revealing clothes in the near future. He decided that he would be alright with that.

“Um…hello? Your Royal Spaceness, you want a Chai Latte or not?”

One of Darcy’s hands waved in front of his face, the other resting on the curve of her hip as she demanded his answer.

 _By the Nine, what has happened to my mind?_ He mused, finding it a supreme effort to draw his eyes away from the tight, dark blue trousers she was wearing.

She was certainly a beautiful woman…for a mortal.

But she was also, _certainly_ , a real pain in the arse.

“Yes,” he clipped out, resolutely turning back to the simulator and entering more of Dr Foster’s data into the machine’s processor. He noted with a resigned sort of pride that he had already become quite tech-savvy in his four short weeks on Midgard.

The beautiful pain in the arse tapped her foot obnoxiously on the floor, crossing her arms over her ample chest. Loki had to work very hard to suppress a grin as they began their routine squabble.

“Yes, what?”

Loki rolled his eyes and sighed theatrically, spinning his chair around to face her.

“What?” he mimicked, smirking at her irritated expression.

Darcy huffed, pushing her alarmingly colourful glasses back up to their rightful place on her nose. “Dude, your manners are appalling. I expected a Prince to be a bit more charming, y’know? But nope, I can’t even get a ‘please’ out of you!”

Feeling a flair of his old mischievousness, Loki placed a hand over his heart and tilted his head towards Darcy, a semi-sincere smile on his face, but his eyes roaming over her with a definite leer.

“Most fair and bounteous Darcy, _please_ forgive this poor Prince for his severe lack of manners. I would be most gracious if you would be kind enough to obtain for me the delightful ‘Chai’ beverage that I so enjoy imbibing.”

The mortal’s face immediately turned a most _delightful_ shade of pink as her full lips popped open, her eyes blinking slowly behind the glasses.

Loki _really_ couldn’t suppress his grin, now. He hadn’t believed that anything could shut up Darcy Lewis once she began a tirade. He decided that there was much entertainment to be had in completely unsettling the stolid laboratory assistant and vowed to do it more often.

He watched with satisfaction as she became aware of her own reaction, straightening her spine and glaring at him indignantly.

That beautiful mouth opened, and he prepared himself for a swift scolding and a caffeine-free afternoon.

But the scolding never came. Instead, bright, loud laughter filled the glass confines of the laboratory, and Darcy’s eyes crinkled with mirth.

“Oh my god! I feel like the frog prince just turned into Prince Charming- and I didn’t even have to kiss you!” Darcy chortled, her entire body shaking with laughter. Loki froze, staring at her in bewilderment. Why did she never react as he expected?

Still chuckling to herself, Darcy backed away, grabbing her purse as she headed for the door. She flashed another grin at him, tossing over her shoulder: “Dude, you should seriously try sweet-talking Fury like that, see if he’d give you a room upgrade or something!”

The glass door shut behind her, and the prior silence of the lab descended once more.

Baffled, Loki glanced across to the other side of the room, meeting the hostile gaze of Dr Foster with one that tried (and immediately failed) to convey his utmost innocence of all things.

Dr Foster, he knew, could always be counted on to hate his guts. There was something comforting about that certainty, he thought.

Turning back to his ‘work’, he attempted to get his mind back to its optimum working condition as he sought to unravel the vast gap between Midgardian science and Aesir magic.

For some reason, he couldn’t get the sound of Darcy’s laughter out of his head for the rest of the day.

*

On the night of the ‘laughing incident’, as Loki had dubbed it, he found himself in the very same dream that he had been experiencing for over a Midgardian week.

Once again, he stood, fully conscious, in a dimly-lit and sumptuously decorated chamber, that, for all its similarities to Gladsheim, was most certainly _not_ in Asgard. Faint, vaguely-pleasant eerie music wafted through the sheer curtains billowing from all sides of the room. The scent of burning herbs reminded him of Frigga’s scrying chamber in the palace, where he had spent many an evening in his youth.

His chest ached.

The shadowed figure, which had previously been his main focus of attention during the maddeningly silent dreams, was nowhere to be seen on this night.

Loki tried to move forward, but found himself stuck in place.

“At last, you are here,” a voice purred from over his shoulder. He turned rapidly, glaring at the obviously empty space behind him.

“Hmmm. I confess, I am surprised you fell for that.”

 _That voice._ He knew that voice.

Grimacing, he turned back around to face none-other than _her_.

Amora. The _Enchantress._

He had not laid eyes on her in almost three hundred years.

He would have been content had it been three thousand.

There she sat, smiling so smugly, the tempestuous little witch from Nornheim who had somehow beguiled him enough to become his mistress. His first mistress.

No sooner had he been declared a grown man than Amora had miraculously appeared in Asgard, ‘accompanying’ her Uncle, the Nornir Ambassador.

Loki, not completely inexperienced around women but certainly not capable of fully comprehending their wiles, was immediately charmed by the passionate, older woman from a foreign realm.

Most of all, with her keen interest in learning more seiðr, Loki had been convinced of their inevitability. He had been happy to teach her, and…one thing lead to another, as it so often does.

He had had sex with her on a table strewn with textbooks and grimoires only an hour into their first lesson.

After that, with nary a discussion on the matter, Amora had become his mistress and had remained so for over a century. Looking back on it, he could scarcely remember how he had managed to put up with her for so great a time.

Loki had long ago decided that her epithet, _the Enchantress_ , had absolutely nothing to do with her seiðr ability and _everything_ to do with her tenacity. Once she had successfully dug her claws into him, she had refused to let go.

“By the Nine, what nightmare is this?” Loki groaned, not quite able to believe his bad luck.

Amora pouted. “Now, now, _Your Highness._ Is that any way to greet a past lover?”

“I wouldn’t know. I do my best to avoid them at all costs.”

The Enchantress laughed, flicking a shining lock of vivid red hair over her shoulder.

“You are so _bad_ , my Prince. Always were,” Amora flirted, absolutely shameless. It was as if she didn’t recall the… _unfriendly_ terms on which they had parted ways.

Loki certainly recalled it, with perfect clarity.

He rolled his eyes. “What do you want? Why are you stalking my dreams?”

Amora pressed a hand to her ample chest and managed to look vaguely innocent.

“Me? _Stalking_ your dreams? Why ever would you think that, Loki?”

He hated himself for the little tremor he felt when she purred his name like that. Of late he had forgotten what it felt like to be lusted after by a woman, and he didn’t doubt that Amora’s effect on him was heightened by that fact.

If truth be told, conquering realms and unforeseen spells of imprisonment could be a bit of a hindrance on one’s love life.

“I have felt your presence these last nights,” he grunted, fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt. Thank the gods, he was fully-clothed. That proved to him that Amora didn’t have full control over the dreamscape.

Amora’s eyes gleamed dark in the dim lighting.

“Have you, truly? I did not think you capable of doing so…without your magic,” she replied, smirking triumphantly.

Loki clenched his jaw, anger and humiliation spreading like fire up his spine. How could she know of his predicament? He doubted that Odin would be bragging about the punishment of his younger son throughout the Nine Realms, but he supposed there was no telling what the doddery old fool would do next.

“How do you know that?” he barked sharply, blustering through his evident weakness.

“Queen Karnilla, of course.”

Loki snorted. Karnilla, the would-be Queen of Nornheim, was little more than a rebel witch who had become quite intoxicated with her own brilliance and attempted to seize her home realm from the Allfather’s control. The struggle between Karnilla’s faction and those Nornir loyal to Asgard had continued for centuries, with no decisive victory in sight. Loki was quite certain that Odin, never a fan of the dull, grey Nornheim landscape or its bizarre people, would have been perfectly content to pass the realm to a suitable regent. In fact, he had even offered Karnilla the role, as well as an Asgardian title, but she had refused most forcefully and sent the Asgardian Ambassador home in several hundred small pieces.

It was both a showy prelude to war and a declaration that she would accept no title but that of ‘Queen of the Norns.’

But Karnilla was far from a ‘suitable’ ruler, even by Loki’s standards. True, her mastery of seiðr was redoubtable, but her interest in the Dark Arts, and particularly necromancy, seemed only to have fuelled her inherent madness in the past couple of centuries. In short, she was not a being Loki had any desire to cross paths with, especially in his current situation.

“And how would the _Lady_ Karnilla know of my punishment?” Loki enquired, smirking himself when Amora looked irritated by his insult to her ‘Queen.’ “Are she and the Allfather become great friends, in my short absence?”

Amora huffed. “Of course not-”

“No. Of course not. She must be utilising that famed skill with seiðr I have heard so much about. No doubt that is also the reason you stand before me now. You never had much skill at illusions, Amora, let alone dream-walking,” Loki sneered, enjoying the flush of anger reddening Amora’s cheeks. She had always been sensitive about her mediocre magical abilities, and intensely jealous of Loki’s own superior gifts.

He deflated slightly, realising just how much she must be enjoying his current predicament.

“I’ll ask again. Why are you here?” He rallied, suddenly sulky and eager to draw the conversation to its close.

Amora’s blood-red lips twisted into a veritable travesty of a smile.

“I have a proposition for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up! I have been insanely busy with work, unfortunately it will probably only get worse as the dreaded Xmas approaches, but I'll do my best to keep updating fairly regularly.  
> Thanks again for the feedback, it's very much appreciated and gives me a boost when the ol' writer's block threatens to come calling!


	7. Well, That Escalated Quickly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clarify the time-line: this chapter begins the night _after_ Loki’s dream-chat with Amora.

“Oh my _God_ , this is _amazing!_ ” Darcy sighed, folding up another slice of pizza and shoving it into her mouth. Jane watched her from the other end of the couch, indulgence and vague disgust warring on her pale features.

“I just had the _biggest_ pizza craving today, y’know? Hmm…I really hope my period isn’t due, I feel like I just had it,” Darcy rambled on, counting the period math on her greasy fingers.

Jane grimaced, reaching for another slice and delicately nibbling on the end of it like a very classy lady. Or a hamster.

Darcy had no patience for delicate nibbling. She was scarfing the pizza down like there was about to be a worldwide shortage.

“Actually, I’m good for another week- woohoo! Think I’m gonna celebrate with more pizza…and maybe some Ben & Jerry’s after. Do you have any?”

Jane didn’t answer. She was busy staring at the popstars gyrating on the silent TV, her perfectly straight eyebrows crinkling together in the middle.

Darcy reached for another slice, deciding to give her friend another thirty seconds to come back down to Earth.

And when that, predictably, didn’t happen, she delivered a sharp little kick to Jane’s hip.

“What was that for?” Jane squealed, literally jumping a few inches off the couch.

Darcy snorted with laughter. “Sorry, dude. Just trying to get you back here on Midgard. D’you think you can stop fantasising about your Asgardian beefcake for, like, _one_ night?”

Jane sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. Darcy thought that she looked more tired than usual. And she suspected that she knew why.

Thor was away on a top-secret mission with his good buddies, the Avengers, and Jane wasn’t coping too well with his absence. In her defence, most ‘missions’ only lasted about a day when the Avengers got involved, but this job, whatever it was (both she and Jane were far too low in the SHIELD hierarchy to know anything about it), hadn't been wrapped up after five days. Darcy had to admit that she was getting a little bit concerned herself. What could be taking them so long to clean up? Even Loki and his alien _army_ only took around twenty-four hours to be properly put down.

She really hoped they weren’t dealing with _another_ alien army. Darcy’s one brush with the Big Metal Robot of Fiery Doom in poor old Puente Antiguo had been enough drama for one lifetime, as far as she was concerned.

And she had a nasty feeling that any potential alien overlord with half a brain would _definitely_ be interested in targeting SHIELD headquarters.

Where she lived.

Sure, the Wifi was great, the ‘canteen’ food was unreal, and there was no crippling rent to make her cry on a monthly basis, _but_ , the Triskelion was pretty much a massive target just waiting for some baddie to come a’ knocking.

Darcy really hoped she wouldn’t be around when said baddie did come calling. She lived on the seventeenth floor and had zero intention of jumping to a near-certain, and watery death in the Potomac River should an alien blitzkrieg be staged on the home turf.

“Darcy!”

“Yo.” Darcy blinked, zoning back to the here and now. Jane stared at her, eyebrows raised in accusation. Oops. She had probably missed some inexplicable, incomprehensible physics babble. What a pity.

“Uh, sorry. What’d I miss?” she asked, straightening up from her uber-slouch and trying to look interested.

Jane huffed quietly. “I was _saying_ , did you think Loki was acting strangely today?”

Darcy frowned, wiping a stubborn bit of tomato sauce from her chin.

“You mean compared to how _normally_ he acts every other day of the week?”

“Ha ha. I’m serious. He actually _started a conversation with me!_ Of his own volition.” Darcy couldn’t hide her surprise; she must have been out of the lab at the time said miracle occurred.

“Well, what did he say?”

Jane waved her hand blithely. “Nothing ground-breaking, he was just following up on a bit of data I had told him about yesterday. But he’s never outright asked me to explain _anything_ before. Remember how his computer screen was fluorescent for about four whole days last week, and he just acted as though he had meant to put it like that?”

Darcy cackled with laughter. _She_ had been the one to ‘accidentally’ press the F7 button on his computer one day in a fit of boredom when he had stepped out for a break. He hadn’t so much as blinked when he returned to find all of his data was now in an alarmingly array of fluorescent pink and green on a black background, which did sort of ruin her fun.

Of course, she didn’t believe for one second that Loki had ‘accidentally’ bumped into her desk on his way out of the lab three days later, spilling a brand new cup of coffee over all of her notes _and,_ conveniently, her keyboard. He had been ridiculously apologetic, but she had seen the smirk in his eyes, and she knew the truth: Loki Odinson was a lot of things, but clumsy wasn’t one of them.

She had fixed his screen first thing the next morning, and her coffee had been safe ever since.

“Alright, so he asked you a bit about the data. That’s good, right? Maybe he’s getting more interested in the project!” Darcy attempted, not really believing the words herself. Jane’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursed.

“No. He’s up to something, I’m sure of it. Thor’s told me all about how Loki works, and he never does _anything_ nice without having some sort of angle.”

Darcy frowned, never a big fan of Jane’s ‘Loki is evil!’ slogan. And she seriously doubted that Thor had outright said that Loki was never nice without a sneaky reason being behind it. If anyone saw the good in Loki, it was his big bro.

Deciding to play along, for the sake of a peaceful evening, Darcy topped up both of their glasses of wine, and prepared to let Jane theorise all she liked.

“Alright, so what do you think he’s up to? World domination, again? Getting the hell out of dodge? Trying to make you give up his mighty Thunderness and go over to the dark side, instead?”

Jane shot her a dirty look. “Laugh all you want, Darce, but I’m serious. I don’t trust Loki one bit. I wish he wasn’t working with us at all, he’s making it stressful just to be in the lab.”

“Aw, c’mon! Don’t be like that!”

“Like what? Realistic? Darcy, he’s a complete liability, and so far he hasn’t proven to be useful in the slightest! I’m so mad at SHIELD for just dumping him on us. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking,” Jane grumbled, looking sourer than ever.

Darcy leaned over and tapped Jane’s untouched wine glass.

“Here, have some of that. You’ll feel better in like five to ten minutes, I promise.”

Jane rolled her eyes, but obligingly picked up the glass and took a generous sip.

“Look, I totally agree with you that it isn’t easy having him around, _but_ , in the interest of being pragmatic, we have to just deal with the fact that we’re stuck with him for now. We need to make the best of it,” Darcy tried, hoping that the appeal to pragmatism would help.

Jane huffed noncommittally.

Darcy took this as a good sign and decided to plough on.

“I think SHIELD placed him with us- well, _you_ \- because they actually think he might be helpful to this project that they’re pumping a few million dollars into. Unfortunately, they didn’t factor in that Loki’s as prickly as a porcupine, so it’s up to _us_ to charm the pants off him!”

“Darcy! No! Don’t even go there!” Jane cried, looking absolutely horrified. Darcy tried not to look too insulted. Sure, she had a bit of track record for seducing numerous SHIELD employees since they had moved into the Trisk last year…but she didn’t jump on everything with a dick.

Besides, Loki was absolutely smoking, and Darcy was convinced that anyone who said otherwise was just kidding themselves.

She didn’t think that would be worth saying to Jane, though.

So she grimaced and pretended to be horrified at the thought of getting Loki out of his pants, even though she fantasised about his butt at least five times a day.

It was a really nice butt, she could totally tell.

“I don’t mean _literally_ charm his pants off! I just mean…well, he has to be lonely, right? He doesn’t really know anyone here but Thor, and their relationship is frosty at best. He really only spends time with us and his guards, who are total bores, BTW-”

Jane smirked. “You’re only saying that because Martin turned you down.”

“Hey! He’s a dumbass, he could have been having some of this-” she stood up and did a theatrical, slightly wobbly twirl, “-but instead he decided to pick that bitch from Logistics. His loss.”

Jane raised her glass in salute. “Here, here. You’re one of a kind, Darce. No guy is good enough for you.”

Darcy snorted. “Okay, I think you’ve had enough wine!”

Jane grinned, pulling Darcy into a hug.

“I’m not drunk. I’m being serious. You’re a great person Darcy, really. I’m so glad that we’re friends.”

Darcy laughed, a little bit uncomfortable with Jane’s sudden mushiness.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course you’re glad to have me around; you would have starved to death about two years ago if it weren’t for me.”

Jane just shook her head, well used to Darcy’s self-effacing humour.

“So, you really think that we should try to be Loki’s friends?” she asked, trying to hide her scepticism.

Darcy grinned at her. “Yay! I knew I’d get you on board! This is great, we can invite him over for a movie night next week, you bring Thor along, and then maybe they’ll rekindle their bromance.”

“Darcy, they don’t have a ‘bromance’, they _are_ brothers.”

Darcy took a big gulp of wine to hide her snort. “That’s not what Loki says.”

Jane shrugged. “He’s being melodramatic. It’s his modus operandi. Maybe that’s why you two seem to get on quite well.” She added, with a sly look.

“How dare you! We’re nothing alike!”

“Sure. Okay. If you say so.”

Darcy lifted a cushion and whacked Jane in the head. “You shush. Just make sure Thor is free for movie-night on Friday, and I’ll corner Loki tomorrow and make sure he says yes.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Jane sighed, facing the inevitable.

“It’s going to be awesome. You’ll see.”

*

“I cannot-”

“WHAT?! No, Loki! C’mon, you have to come! We’re having it especially for you!” Darcy pleaded, not even embarrassed by the fact that she was basically begging him at this point.

She had timed it perfectly, approaching him after their first coffee break, so that he wasn’t still half asleep, and naturally felt indebted to her for bringing him the coffee. Jane had left the lab for a bathroom break, so she wasn't around to glare holes into Loki’s head while Darcy spoke to him. She had laid out the invite, making it seem casual and totally natural, and Loki had listened to her without cutting her off, which was pretty miraculous in itself.

So, really, he had gotten her hopes up, and now he couldn’t say ‘no’. Those were the rules.

For his part, Loki looked genuinely startled by her vociferousness.  

"You truly wish for me to attend this 'movie night'?" Loki asked, speaking slowly.

"Yeeeesss," Darcy replied, drawing the word out in mimicry.

Loki’s eyes narrowed. "Why?"

It was Darcy's turn to look perplexed.

"Why what?"

"Why do you wish for me to attend? We are not friends-"

"Dude! Ouch! You just seriously burned me!" She cried, patting out imaginary flames on her arm.

Loki looked genuinely alarmed for about two seconds before he realised that she was joking.

"What are you talking about?" He grumbled, his patience clearly wearing thin. Darcy decided it might be time to wrap things up. Seal the deal etc.

"First of all, we are going to be friends, so I'd suggest that you just save yourself the hassle and accept that I'm going to be an awesome part of your life from now on. And secondly, aren't you bored? Do you do anything but come to the lab or sit in your rooms?"

It was only when Loki turned the full force of his glare on her that Darcy realised she may have majorly insulted him.

"I would remind you that I am a prisoner. I do not think I am supposed to be having fun," he gritted out, the tendons in his jaw prominent.

Darcy judged herself a little bit for finding it ridiculously hot.

She gulped, willing the blush heating up her cheeks to clear before he looked at her again.

She placed a ginger hand on his forearm. "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad. I really do want you to come to the movie night-"

"Why?" he snapped, completely hostile.

He didn’t pull away from her touch, though.

"Because, we work together now and I feel like I hardly know you."

Loki scoffed, still glaring at the computer screen.

"Why do you want to 'know' me? I am a monster, all know that."

Darcy gripped the back of his chair and spun him around to face her.

"Listen, don't go banding that word around and think I'm going to fall for the "I'm an irredeemable villain' routine-"

Loki leapt to his feet, towering over her. Every inch of his tall frame screamed fury, but Darcy refused to move back even a half step. 

This was progress, and she would take it.

"You know nothing, you foolish girl, I am a monster, to the very core-"

"Oh please, you're a spoilt little rich boy who had a large scale temper tantrum! Don't think you can just call yourself a monster and that excuses everything you did! You made those choices-"

"You know nothing!" Loki yelled, his deep, loud voice completely terrifying.

Darcy’s hand immediately flew to her jeans pocket, searching for the taser that she had stopped bringing to work a week prior.

Not two seconds after mentally cursing herself for being so stupid, Darcy saw rapid movement in her peripherals and a stream of guards suddenly poured into the lab, the red pinpoints from their guns coalescing on Loki’s chest.

She felt the first proper thrum of fear in her own chest.

"Loki, stand down or we will be forced to neutralise you," said one of the guards, calm as you like.

Loki was breathing hard, his eyes wide and his face completely drained of colour.

Darcy felt inexplicably guilty for getting him in such a state.

So she did something predictably stupid.

She moved closer to him, turning towards the guards with her hands outstretched.

"Please, don't shoot him, he wasn’t doing anything wrong!"

The foremost guard, who was brandishing a small remote that Darcy assumed would activate Loki's shock cuff with just the press of a button, addressed her tersely: "Ms Lewis, please step aside-"

Darcy took a deep breath, trying to take the hysteria out of her own voice.

"Please, you have to believe me. We just had a slight disagreement, he didn't threaten me or anything. Right?" She said, looking over her shoulder at Loki, silently willing him to agree and prove that he wasn't three seconds away from murdering her.

His eyes flicked from the guards down to her, and she held her breath.

His jaw clenched and unclenched, and he tore his gaze from hers.

"It was a minor disagreement," he said stiffly, robotically, "I meant Ms Lewis no harm."

The guards seemed to relax ever so slightly, the tension in the room deflating like an old balloon.

They didn’t put their guns down, though.

"Alright," the group's apparent leader conceded. "I think it may be best if we call it a day. Loki, we'll escort you back to your quarters."

"But...it's not even midday," Darcy muttered, knowing it was a completely lame excuse.

The guards ignored her.

So did Loki. He stepped around her like she was a piece of furniture and silently followed his guards out of the lab without a backwards glance.

"Fuck," She whispered to absolutely no one, trying to hold back tears.

So much for befriending Loki. 

She'd just made herself the enemy for sure.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that happened! And I didn’t even plan it, those two just went at it and my typing fingers were on fire trying to keep up with them!
> 
> For anyone wondering what on Midgard happened to Amora and Loki’s conversation, worry not- we'll be seeing Loki’s take on the dream and the events of this chapter next time.
> 
> Feedback is, as always, deeply appreciated :)


	8. Thank You, Universe

Loki stormed back to his rooms at an almost god-like speed, pointedly ignoring his guards who were clearly struggling to keep up with him.

He was furious.

So furious that he could feel the quaking of his muscles, absolutely desperate to lash out and hit _something. Anything._

Anyone.

But he couldn’t afford to do anything that would anger SHIELD, his jailers.

So he moved faster, pushing his weak mortal body to the limit as he scaled the labyrinthine staircases up to the floor of his residence.

He needed to be alone, away from idiotic mortals who knew nothing and insulted him as if he weren’t a Prince of Asgard. A God amongst insects.

Loki forced himself to keep his emotions in check until he had a bit of privacy, so when he and his honour guard had reached the door to his chambers he merely waved his wrist over the scanner without breaking his stride and barked out a terse: “Do not follow!”

The door slid shut with a pleasant clunk behind him, and Loki came to an abrupt halt, his quick eyes scanning the room for something to throw or smash to pieces.

There wasn’t much to choose from.

The ‘couches’ were fixed to the floor, as was the low table placed between the two of them. All of the light fixtures were built into the ceilings and walls, so they weren’t going to be of much use.

Loki clenched his fists in irritation, stalking towards the small kitchen area.

Again, the two tall chairs were stuck resolutely to the floor.

He wrenched open a cupboard, grinning as his eyes alighted on a pile of untouched plates.

They would do quite nicely.

His grin immediately changed to a grimace when reached for the plates and realised that they were made of that pesky Midgardian fabric, plastic.

They weren’t going to be easy to smash.

Loki growled in frustration, slamming the tiny door and storming into his sleeping quarters. There was absolutely nothing there that he could throw about, either.

Utterly fed up, and completely thwarted, he threw himself down onto the bed and glared at the stark white ceiling.

After only a few seconds, he could feel his blind fury begin to fade, giving way to an irritable sort of thoughtfulness- exactly the state he had been trying to avoid by throwing objects around his glorified prison cell.

And, of course, his thoughts immediately turned to Darcy and the overwhelming tide of emotions she had wrought from him in only a matter of minutes.

His feelings churned and bubbled, a red tangled mess that he could barely hope to unravel.

He was angry at Darcy. That much he knew for sure.

But he was also…he was…not good at examining his own emotions, clearly. Reading the feelings and thoughts of others had been a particular skill of his which he had cultivated for many centuries- it was a natural counterpart to his fondness for manipulation- but analysing his own feelings had never been his strong suit. He preferred to react strongly, almost blindly, before taming the emotion and squirrelling it away in some lost and forbidden place in the back of his own subconscious.

If history was any indication, it wasn’t a method that had served him particularly well.

So he decided to start out simply, with easy statements.

He was angry with Darcy, for insulting him, for daring to pass a verdict on him and his life. She knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. She was a foolish mortal, barely older than an Asgardian child, but still she felt entitled to speak to him thusly. It set a rage burning in his chest.

But, on the other hand…

He felt exhilarated. His heart was pounding loudly in his own ears, and he could feel small tremors of adrenaline spreading throughout his body. A twisted part of his already twisted soul had enjoyed arguing with Darcy, had enjoyed the yelling and glaring and all round dramatics of their encounter.

He had… _enjoyed_ being angered.

How strange.

Mulling over it, Loki had to concede that there was some logic to that hypothesis. After all, had he not been bemoaning a lack of stimulation in his new life on Midgard? Had he not feared boredom? Had he not lain on this same bed and stared at this same ceiling every night for the past five weeks and wondered if it were possible for a God-turned-mortal to die from sheer ennui and stagnation?

He certainly wasn’t bored right now, and it was all thanks to the tiny human named Darcy Lewis.

Even if she was an insolent little chit.

He did not dislike Darcy. _Couldn’t_ dislike her. She spoke to him regularly, and brought him hot drinks and food to eat while he worked. She even invited him to spend time with her outside their working environment.

She was determined to be his friend.

That thought alone made Loki squirm internally, so he moved his mind back to their argument.

He had to admit that he admired Darcy’s fire, her tenacity. Even in his mortal frame, he could have hurt her quite severely in the brief seconds before the guards entered the laboratory. She could not be unaware of his superior size and strength. And yet, she had said all of those things to him, allowing his rage to ignite her own.

She was a brave Midgardian, perhaps slightly stupid, too, but then he had always been of the mind that the pair were closely intertwined.

Thor had _always_ been hailed as ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’ when they triumphantly returned to Asgard from one dangerous battle or another. The sheer stupidity of his (not) brother’s actions on almost every one of these occasions had convinced Loki that bravery and foolishness were two sides of the same coin.

But he did not for one moment think that Darcy was stupid, nor foolish. She was intelligent, he could tell. Certainly, she did not have the depth of scientific knowledge that Dr Foster possessed, nor could she hope to compare to his own intelligence or that of most Aesir. But for a young human, she was sharp-witted and inquisitive.

In other words, nothing like the idiotic sheep that Loki had assumed almost all Midgardians were.

She was feisty, and she wasn’t afraid to speak what was on her mind, no matter how peculiar or infuriating.

Yes, Darcy interested him, beguiled him and riled him like no other ever had.

Except, perhaps, for Amora. That witch.

Her appearance in the dream-scape two night’s prior had truly rattled him- he couldn’t decide if he was more excited or more anxious about getting their ‘plot’ underway.

He grimaced, lamenting the fact that he had already managed to ruin his new resolve to befriend Darcy, and then Dr Foster. In less than a day!

If he couldn’t forge a sound relationship with them, he had no hope of fulfilling his end of the bargain.

He couldn’t let that happen. It was the one beacon of hope currently shining in his pathetic existence, in spite of its unsavoury source.

He shut his eyes and let the dream-come-nightmare replay in his mind.

Anything was better than thinking of his failure.

\\*/*\\*/

“A proposition?” Loki repeated, staring at Amora dubiously. Her words definitely suggested a sexual invitation, and despite his earlier pining for companionship, Loki had absolutely no intention of indulging her.

She smirked at him in a way that told him she knew _exactly_ what he was thinking.

“Yes. A proposition, beneficial to both parties.”

He decided that she was drawing out the innuendo on purpose. He crossed his arms and glared at her, silently advising her to cut the dramatics and get on with it.

“Oh, very well. Where has your sense of humour gone to, Loki?” she grumbled, waving a careless hand at him.

“It must have been taken along with my magic. Now speak of this ‘proposition’,” he gritted out, wishing that he could grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

Amora sighed, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.

“We are both in a position wherein we want something, but cannot get it. Yes?” she asked, her prior arrogance melting away to reveal a much younger appearance.

Loki swore to himself that he wouldn’t fall for any traps her wide brown eyes set.

“I do not know what you want, nor do I care.”

Amora glared, but didn’t comment on his words. “ _You_ want your magic returned to you, of course. I can make that happen,” she declared, pulling herself up from her casual slouch.

Loki simply raised his eyebrow in derision.

“Well, not _me_ , personally,” she hedged, “But I can ask someone capable of returning what is rightfully yours.”

Now he really couldn’t keep silent.

“Odin?”

Amora was perfectly straight-faced as she replied: “No. Queen Karnilla.”

Loki laughed, his mirth only increased by the indignant look on Amora’s face.

“You jest. Your Queen has no such power.”

The sides of Amora’s jaw flared. “She can do it.”

Loki shook his head, ready to argue once more, but he was cut off.

“She has one of the Infinity Gems, Loki," Amora said, earnestly.

He stared at her in shock for several moments, conscious that his mouth was hanging open as if he were a halfwit.

They had discussed the Infinity Gems extensively over the centuries, as did many practitioners of seiðr. They were a temptation to just about anyone: warrior, sage, or king. No amount of seiðr could trump the power of even one of the six soul gems. Not even Odin was a match for them. They were fragments of the universe's core, created at its inception. Pure, unadulterated magic. Yet so much more than magic- they could perform the impossible: they could rewind time, or even raise the dead.

The only limits were the wielder's imagination. Plus their intent... and the Gem's willingness to cooperate, which was never guaranteed.

As Loki had learned to his peril, when he had meddled with both the Space Gem and Mind Gem, while they were so clearly in-tuned with Thanos. His attempts to merge his own consciousness with them while they were under the Titan's control had no doubt fractured Loki's mental stability.

“Which one?” he enquired, demanding his voice to remain steady. This could change everything. Not just for him, but for the whole Nine Realms. If another Gem had been found within their small universe, it was only a matter of time before _someone_ from an entirely different galaxy appeared to claim it.

“I know not. She would not show me, but I _felt_ it.”

Loki could only look at her sceptically. Certainly any accomplished wielder of seiðr would be able to detect the massive energy spikes of the Gems when in close proximity, but he wasn’t confident that Amora could be considered ‘accomplished’.

Nor that she could be trusted to fulfil any sort of bargain.

Still, it might be an opportunity for him to get his magic back, and that was worth a calculated risk.

“Are you sure?” he asked, staring at her intently as he waited for her answer.

Amora looked suitably (and uncharacteristically) sincere when she replied: “Yes.”

“Very well. Tell me of this proposition,” he commanded, clasping his hands behind his back and drawing his frame up taller.

Time to negotiate.

“Queen Karnilla will use the Infinity Gem to undo Odin’s spell which has rendered you mortal. Your seiðr will be restored, and you will be Aesir once more.”

Loki’s jaw ticked.

“And _in return_?” he pressed, impatient.

Amora fidgeted, fluffing her skirts and pushing her hair off her shoulders.

“In return…you will seduce Thor’s mortal pet until she comes to your bed.”

Well, he certainly hadn’t been expecting that.

Loki took a few moments to collect himself. Amora’s impassioned words hung in the air between them.

“Now I am assured. You are jesting-”

“I am not!” Amora cried, jumping to her feet.

Loki snorted with barely-concealed laughter. “Then why in the name of Hel do you want me to seduce Thor’s woman?”

She blushed, but didn’t answer.

In an instant, Loki felt rage stir in his gut as he was transported back around four hundred years.

“ _Ah._ So your passion for the Crown Prince has not abated, after all these years? Was one fuck not enough for you?” He knew his words were crass, and cutting, but she deserved it. That she would have the audacity to suggest such a thing to him, after what had happened between them…after what she had done to him.

The pain of acknowledging that his _own mistress_ preferred his brother had been the start of Loki’s slow descent into a creature made of rage and envy.

It had broken him.

He had thought the wounds long healed, but the rush of feeling in his chest said otherwise.

Amora continued hesitantly, ignoring his insults. “If you can lure her away from him, and he sees that she is unfaithful-”

“He’ll what? Trip and fall into your waiting arms?” Loki sneered, teeth bared.

He couldn’t believe that this was happening. Again!

Naturally, he didn’t want Amora in _that_ way, but her determination to have Thor again chafed at his pride.

Why did women throw themselves at his brother?

 _Not your brother_ , he reminded himself grimly.

Amora sighed. “No…but it would give me an opportunity to cast a small enamouring enchantment on him. His heart is too tightly bound to her now, and I fear that bond strengthens every day.” She looked Loki in the eye. “I want him,” she declared, definitively. As if that was it. That was all that mattered, what _she_ wanted. Everyone else –Jane, Thor, _him_ \- be damned.

It was absurd. He wanted to tell her to go and fuck herself, that he wouldn’t do her dirty work for her.

But, oh, how he wanted his magic back.

And he wanted it now.

He took his time, pretending to think over her request, while quietly trying to calm himself.

“To summarise: I will seduce Thor’s woman, which, when achieved, will give you an opportunity to enchant him and take his heart for your own. In return, your Queen will utilise the Infinity Gem in her possession to restore my seiðr and immortality. Correct?”

“Correct,” Amora replied, her eyes already shining with anticipation.

Loki ran a hand through his hair. “There are a lot of variables in this plan, Amora. It is sloppy. I like it not.”

She grimaced.

“I see the benefits for both of us, should I be successful…but I do not see the benefit for your Queen. Why would she bother to restore my magic? I do not know her,” he stated, proud of himself for thinking through the many angles and tangles of this plot.

This plot that may be his only chance at getting off Midgard.

“I have a good relationship with my Queen; she will-”

“Perform any piece of magic you desire, sweet Amora? I doubt it. Tell me the real reason,” he commanded, watching her like a cat watches a mouse.

Amora bit her lip. “She wants you to visit Nornheim. She’s heard of your skill and thinks you are wasted in Asgard. She wants Nornheim to be the most powerful realm- the most magical- in the Nine, and she wants you to help her achieve that.”

A slow smile spread over Loki’s face.

Here was a gift from the Universe.

An opportunity to destroy Thor.

An opportunity to ally with one of Odin’s greatest enemies.

An opportunity to get his seiðr back.

All wrapped up in one parcel.

“Well then…how could I possibly refuse?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Sigh* So, getting Loki and Amora to talk is like pulling teeth. I don't know why, but I couldn't get the natural flow going in the same way I do with conversations between Darcy and Loki. Maybe that's a good sign that they're meant to be together?  
> Anyway, I wanted to get this chapter up and out of the way, because now our 'proposition' is revealed, there's so much more good stuff to come- yay!


	9. The Hardest Word

 

Darcy felt completely craptastic.

Mind you, that wasn’t a word she had used since about the fifth-grade, but oh man, was it legit right now.

There she had bounced into the lab earlier that day, completely intent on advancing her impending friendship with Loki, and what had she done?

Called him a spoiled rich boy, ridiculed his attempt to take over the Earth, and driven him to such blinding rage that he had to be escorted from the lab for everyone’s safety.

Seriously, what a stellar job. She’d definitely get an A+ in her ‘making friends with aliens’ class.

“It could have been worse,” Jane offered, patting Darcy’s shoulder gingerly. All had been well in the lab when she had stepped out for maybe twenty minutes to discuss a particular footnote with Dr Davis. When she returned, Loki and his guards had vanished, and Darcy was slumped over her desk, crying.

Even after more than half an hour of Darcy’s distraught babble, Jane wasn’t entirely confident that she knew all that had taken place. Maybe it made her a bad friend, but she wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to know.

“Oh yeah, you’re right. It could have been worse- I could have shot him!” Darcy wailed, covering her face with her trailing cardigan sleeves.

Jane made a clicking sound like a mother hen, and patted her intern’s head.

“Honestly, Darce, you’re lucky he didn’t attack you. I think we should shelve the ‘befriending Loki’ plan before you get -”

“No! I can’t stop _now_!” Darcy cried, sitting up and wiping her drippy nose on her sleeve. “He’s just starting to warm up to me. I just have to do some damage control, and then we’ll be right on track! Movie night is still happening!” She declared, straightening her glasses and trying to flatten her hair. She had pulled it in all directions during her dramatic sob-fest.

Jane sighed loudly, but didn’t bother to argue any further. Darcy had that resolute look in her eyes and nothing was going to deter her.

“Will you at least wait until tomorrow? Let him cool off a bit?”

“You mean let him spend the night stewing over it and constantly refreshing his feelings of hatred towards me? Nuh-uh. I’m sorting this out right now!” And with that, she hopped off her chair and headed towards the door.

She paused suddenly, turning back to face her bemused boss.

“Wait. Do I look like I’ve spent the last hour crying?”

Jane tried valiantly, one more time to stop the inevitable second incident of the day. “Um. Yes. Maybe you should wait-”

“No way! Crying girls always freak guys out. If I have to guilt him into forgiving me, I will!”

Jane had nothing more to say to that, so she just shrugged and wished her intern luck.

She was seriously going to need it.

And maybe some common sense, to boot.

*

It wasn’t until Darcy reached the elevators that she realised she didn’t know where exactly Loki lived in the Triskelion. Was he on a maximum security floor hundreds of feet below ground?

She grimaced, realising that she was going to have to stop a guard and ask for directions. That wouldn’t raise any suspicions among the higher-ups, right?

Yeah, _unlikely._

What if they refused to let her visit him? She wasn’t exactly au fey on the conditions of Loki’s incarceration. Maybe guests were a strict no-no. Still, she had to try.

Wandering past the elevators to the other end of the science block, Darcy kept her eyes peeled for a suitable-looking guard.

Oh sure, there were guards swarming over every section of this floor, but she really wanted to find someone whom she already knew and had a rapport with.

And preferably someone she hadn’t slept with. Could be tricky enough, there weren’t many eligible men to choose from on the Nerd floor where she spent a solid proportion of her life, so she had experimented with quite a few of the guards in these parts.

After several minutes of skulking past lab after lab, trying not to look too conspicuous, Darcy finally came across a familiar face: Cameron, one of the youngest guards assigned to the Trisk, he had a dazzling smile and a swoon-worthy South African accent.

Of course, he also had a swoon-worthy South African wife, but what can you do? No harm in admiring a married man.

“Hey Cameron, what’s up?”

Ah, there was that amazing smile. Darcy felt her own smile bloom in response.

“Not much going on, Darcy. With me, anyways. A little bird told me that you got into it with His Majesty this morning.”

Darcy felt a light blush dusting her cheeks in response to Cameron’s amused expression.

The guards were such gossips, she wondered that they ever got any work done.

Shoving her hands into her pockets, she tried her best to repaint the scene as a casual disagreement among friends. Rather than labelling it ‘that time Foster’s intern almost got shish-kebabed a la Coulson.’

“Yeah. We sort of got into it. He said some stuff, then I said some stuff, then he got way mad, and...uh, the guys had to escort him out.”

The laughter in Cameron’s eyes said that he had heard a totally different tale from his colleagues.

“Whatever it was, I’m guessing it was pretty intense. You taking the rest of the day off?”

“No. I, um…actually need you to do me a favour.”

Cameron looked a bit surprised, but he didn’t shoot her down straight away, which she took as a good sign.

“What is it?”

“Do you know where Loki’s room is?”

Judging from the way his eye’s widened to the size of golf-balls, Darcy guessed that Cameron had _not_ been expecting her to say that.

“Loki?”

“Yes,” she replied, quietly, sheepishly.

“As in the alien who was about two seconds away from turning you into a smudge on the floor this morning?”

“Um. Yes.” Her voice was almost inaudible.

Cameron sighed, looking like an anxious Dad on prom-night.

“Darcy, _why?_ ”

“Because…I need to, y’know, _apologise_.”

“Apologise? To Loki?” Cameron sounded as though she had just told him she enjoyed drinking the blood of innocents.

She huffed. Seriously, everyone seemed to think that Loki was (a) a genuine villain to the core, and (b) undeserving of any general courtesies extended to other humans ( _or_ humanoid aliens). So ridiculous.

“Yeah, I was really rude to him, and I want to smooth things over before work tomorrow.”

Cameron shifted, his eyes darting around the parameters of the corridor. He glanced back at Darcy, his voice dropping into a low, rapid whisper.

“From what I hear, _he_ may not be going back to work with you tomorrow, or any other day. Fury’s planning to review the incident and discuss it with Thor at some point later today. I don’t know what’s going to happen. The rule was, Loki couldn’t hurt anyone around here-”

“He didn’t _hurt_ me!” Darcy hissed, slightly insulted. Did they think she couldn’t handle a few harsh words from Loki? What was she, a daisy?

“Then why have you been crying?” Cameron shot back immediately, gesturing to the redness around her eyes.

“Yeah. Okay, so I was a bit upset. Big deal! He didn’t physically hurt me. He didn’t even touch me!” Darcy felt bad for berating Cameron like this, but dammit, he was the only target she had right now.

She let out a little growl as she balled up her fists. “I’m going to talk to Fury right now-”

“No! No way! You aren’t even supposed to know this stuff, I’ll be in so much shit if Fury thinks I told you anything!” Cameron countered, blocking her path. Darcy crossed her arms, glaring up at him.

“Look, Cameron. I’m either going to talk with Fury right now… _or_ I’m going to talk to Loki, _right now._ It’s up to you.”

They had a glaring contest that lasted all of three seconds before Cameron grimaced, reaching for the radio at his chest.

“S-one-twenty-two here. I need cover on floor nine sector B12. Over.”

“Roger that. S-five-sixty-one on the way to you. Over,” came the crackled response on the line not two seconds later.

Darcy tried really hard not to laugh at the fact they had actually said ‘Roger that.’

They waited in companionable silence for a couple of minutes, before a thudding tattoo of footsteps told them that Cameron’s replacement was nearby.

A short, stocky man with white-blond hair and what could only be described as a ‘baby-face’, rounded the corner and took up position a few feet from Darcy and Cameron.

He gave Cameron a stiff, disinterested nod, and ignored Darcy completely.

She stuck her tongue out at his haughty profile.

“C’mon,” Cameron sighed, gently nudging her shoulder until she walked ahead of him towards the nearest elevators.

She stepped back and let Cameron call the elevator, wondering if it was even possible to access Loki’s rooms from this point. What if she had to hike up six flights of stairs, too? Cardio was not her friend. Although the hike may be worth it if she got to follow behind Cameron and his world-class butt.

When they stepped into the elevator, Cameron took the ID around his neck and swiped it through a nigh-invisible slot behind where the buttons were located. The doors shut sharply, and every one of the floor numbers lit up brightly.

This was some total James Bond shit. She couldn’t help but smile.

A cool, automated female voice suddenly filled the small tin can. “Please identify all passengers and intended destination.”

“Oosthuizen, Cameron. Escorting Darcy Lewis to level 27, subsection C. Seeking approval to visit room seventeen, Loki Odinson.”

 _So James Bond_.

The disembodied voice took a few seconds to get back to them, but thankfully, she said: “Access granted.” And they were off.

The elevators at the Trisk were scary fast, so Darcy shut her eyes and tried not to think of just how quickly they were moving up through the levels of the building.

Before she knew it, the doors were dinging, and an uncharacteristically anxious looking Cameron was fobbing her off onto another guard.

“I’ll leave you with Jameson, Darcy. Good luck.”

Darcy thanked him, and quickly approached ‘Jameson’ with a small smile. She thanked the universe that at least it wasn’t one of her ex-one-night-stands.

Jameson nodded in return, guiding her towards a central hallway and down one of the three ‘branches’ of corridors.

“What is you purpose in visiting the prisoner, Ms Lewis?”

Darcy blinked in surprise, not having expected that question. Jameson didn’t seem like much of a talker, but evidently _someone_ wanted to know what she was up to.

“Um…I wanted to talk to him, about what happened this morning. It was really my fault, and I want to smooth things over.”

Jameson watched her from the corner of his eye. “Alright. We’ve established that the prisoner isn’t hostile at this time, but you won’t be able to speak to him in private. There’ll be a heavy guard presence in the room.” He gestured at the six guards lining the corridor a few yards ahead of them.

_This must be Loki’s lair._

She was slightly disgruntled that guards would be in the room while she spoke with Loki (if anything, she expected their presence to make him even more difficult than usual), but she understood the necessity of it from SHIELD’s point of view. They couldn’t afford to take any chances. Especially after what had happened that very morning.

Actually, she was amazed that they were allowing her to speak with Loki at all. Cameron’s words floated back into her mind, and she drooped slightly at the thought of Loki being banned from the lab for good. She’d miss his little sourpuss face.

And his universe-class butt.

“Sounds good,” she said, not even trying to sound convincing. The group of six guards split, three behind her and Jameson, and three in front, as they entered the door marked ‘17’.

Darcy felt a beat of anxiety flutter through her chest as she took in the sparse furnishings of the living area. Three guards walked across the room and through an archway, where she presumed Loki was currently sulking. Jameson waved her over to two long couches. She picked the one opposite the archway, so when a slightly dishevelled Loki emerged with a pissed look on his face, she unfortunately got the full effect.

_Maybe this was a terrible idea._

The guards who had roused Loki from his bedroom took up various positions around the living room, as did Jameson and the other three. None of them stood particularly close to where she sat, but she knew that they would be able to hear every word of their conversation echoed throughout the small room.

She doubted that they would allow her speak with Loki if there was any opportunity for secrecy.

Loki dropped onto the couch opposite her, lazily stretching one long leg over the arm rest, and fixing that intense green stare on her.

_Okay. Guess I’m making the first move._

Darcy tried a smile, but it felt so stiff and awkward on her face that she dropped it almost immediately, instead turning her attention to a loose thread at the worn knees of her jeans. Loki continued to watch her blankly, his face as a still as a statue’s.

It was so awkward. The tension was hanging heavily in the air, and the combination of Loki’s gaze and her knowledge that the guards were listening to her with similar interest sent Darcy into a minor panic.

So, of course, she started to babble like than idiot. As always!

“So, um…hi. How are you? Things got a bit heated back there, and I wanted to check up on you. Y’know, because we’re colleagues. And soon to be friends. Hopefully. Maybe. Uh…so yeah, how are you?” Once her mouth had stopped running, Darcy immediately wanting to hit herself for sounding like such a grade A  mouth-breather.

She chanced a glance up at Loki, convinced that she would see an expression of utmost loathing and irritation on his face.

He looked completely bewildered. His eyes were wide, his lips parted slightly as he watched her. It was actually quite endearing.

As if he could hear her thoughts, his face slipped back into that blank mask that she hated so much.

More awkward silence.

“Um. Okay, so in a good conversation, this is the moment where you say something in response to what I just said,” she tried, wondering if her natural snarkiness was already getting out of control.

She endured a few more uncomfortable seconds of being clinically analysed by those rich green eyes before Loki finally deigned to speak to her.

“I am fine, Miss Lewis,” he said stiffly. He sounded exactly like the Loki would had first been dumped in their lab; the one who didn’t speak unless absolutely necessary.

The one who called her ‘Miss Lewis’ in that cold disinterested tone.

Darcy wasn’t for having them go back to square one. No way, José.

“No! Don’t you ‘Miss Lewis’ me, Loki!” She cried loudly, waving her arms dramatically. Loki blinked, surprised once more, and Darcy thought she heard one of the guards muffle a quiet laugh.

“What?” Loki breathed, his eyebrows quirked in an expression of both confusion and suspicion.

“Don’t go being all cold with me again! We’ve made such good progress these past few weeks, I don’t want our stupid fight to ruin it. I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have said those things to you, it was out of line. So…yeah, I’m sorry.” Darcy’s voice had dropped to a near-whisper at the end of her outburst, but she knew that everyone in the room had heard every syllable.

Especially Loki, who was doing a stellar impression of a goldfish as he stared at her.

His surprise made Darcy a little bit sad- clearly people weren’t in the habit of apologising to the God of Mischief. She had expected him to shrug off her apology, or bait her, or go berserk and try to kill her.

She definitely hadn’t expected _this_ reaction.

So she decided to give him a minute to compose himself. She hummed to herself randomly, tapping her finger on the tops of her legs to make a little bit of a beat as she had a good look around Loki’s room.

There really wasn’t much to look at. It was very prison-like, she noted grimly.

Darcy glanced back at Loki: still nothing. He had managed to shut his mouth though, which was probably progress.

She leaned forward and snapped her fingers in his face.

“Hey. Loki. I said I’m sorry, now you say it back.”

Loki immediately glowered at her, but she suddenly didn’t feel afraid in the slightest.

“Apologise?” he repeated slowly, one eyebrow dramatically raised.

Darcy grinned. “Yeah. Go on, you can say it. I know you want to,” she teased, laughing at his disgusted expression.

“What have _I_ to apologise for?”

“For being all scary and mean to me earlier. Seriously, Loki, friends don’t act like that with each other,” she admonished, really enjoying getting a rise out of him.

Loki just glared harder.

“C’mon, just get it off your chest. I know you want to say it!”

Looking both pissed and extremely nauseated, Loki managed to push a quiet “I’m sorry” past the thin line of his lips.

Darcy clapped, openly grinning. “Okay, awesome! Forgiveness all round, I like it! So movie night on Friday, you in?”

“You still wish me to attend this ‘movie night’? After our argument this morning?” Loki asked, incredulous.

“Uh, yeah! Of course! I said we were having it for you, didn’t I?”

“Well- _yes_ , but I-”

Darcy jumped up, finally feeling back to her normal, bubbly self. “Sweet. Be at my apartment by 8pm, it’s on the fourth floor, wing C, number 24. Phew! That’s such a mouthful, right? Imagine if someone every tried to send me a postcard, they’d never be able to fit the address-”

“ _Darcy!_ ” Loki said loudly, trying to call back her ever-wandering attention. She looked down at him, her cheeks still dimpled from grinning, and he felt inexplicable guilt for what he was about to say.

“I cannot accept your invitation. I cannot attend this ‘movie night’,” he explained, spreading his hands out in a gesture of helplessness.

“Wha- why not?!” Darcy couldn’t even try to hide her indignation. She was about two seconds from throwing the mother of all temper tantrums when she saw something that looked _extremely_ like a blush forming on Loki’s ridiculously sharp cheekbones.

It was simultaneously the cutest and hottest thing she had ever seen, and in the interest of not jumping Loki’s bones right there with an audience of seven, she balled her hands up in the hem of her t-shirt and flopped back down on the couch, waiting for Loki to explain himself.

Loki caught her curious gaze and sighed, rubbing a hand over her face.

“I cannot attend because I do not have clearance to visit your residence. I am only permitted in these rooms, the common eating area, and the laboratory. All with a guard, of course,” he added bitterly, glancing sullenly at the black-clad figures currently filling his small living room.

"Oh my God, that's totally criminal!" she gasped. His rooms were fucking horrible, too. The lab wasn’t much more scenic…and the less said about the canteen, the better.

Loki shot her a sardonic look.

"Oh. Right. Well, admittedly bad choice of words there, but seriously! That sucks so much!" 

Darcy had had no idea he was so restricted. Sure, if she had taken a moment to _really_ think about it, she would have sussed out that SHIELD wasn’t very well going to let a mass murderer and hopeful overlord of Earth skip through the halls of their biggest (and most populated) facility whenever he felt like it.

But the fact that he couldn’t even come to her apartment really pissed her off, logical or not. How was she supposed to make friends with the guy if he couldn’t make it for movie nights? Or tequila nights? Or wine nights?

No, this just wouldn’t do. Nick Fury was getting in the way of her mission, and she wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll talk to Fury,” she declared boldly, straightening her glasses and gesturing to Jameson that it was time to roll. Loki watched her with an air of sceptical amusement. He obviously knew exactly what kind of tough-ass, smart-ass Fury was.

The guards all seemed momentarily unsure, but Darcy figured she must have been looking unusually formidable, because one of them scrambled to open the door for her.

“You,” she pointed to Loki as she got up, “You’re coming to movie night. No backsies. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She didn’t bother to wait for his response, nor did she even glance his way as she marched out of the room, so she didn’t really know how he had reacted to her declaration.

But as she stormed towards the elevators, she imagined that he was doing a great impression of a goldfish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! So our favourite twosome have buried the hatchet- for this particular argument at least!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and thanks to all for the feedback so far :) I'll aim to get another chapter up in a week's time but unfortunately with Christmas approaching I'm just getting busier and busier with work, so opportunities for writing will probably be less.


	10. Mission Improbable

For the second time in one day, Darcy found herself wandering aimlessly in search of a high security room in the Triskelion.

And this high security room just happened to belong to the Director of SHIELD.

Easy peasy.

Fury’s office probably wasn’t even in the Trisk itself, but buried in a secret cavern beneath the Potomac River. Nothing would surprise her at this point.

It was one thing to lasso the nearest friendly guard and demand that she be escorted to visit a pretty high-profile prisoner, but somehow Darcy didn’t think the same tactic would work this time around.

Although, short of magically stumbling upon Fury’s office _and_ being granted security clearance to enter it, she didn’t see too many options.

So she huffed and puffed as the awesome James Bond elevator returned her to Nerd Paradise, with the unfortunately stoic Jameson as her escort. He didn’t look like the type of guard who would be open to persuasion of any kind. Bummer.

“So, um…thanks,” she half-muttered, stepping out of the elevator and giving Jameson a little wave. He gave her a curt nod just before the steel doors slammed shut.

That nod gave her an idea.

Darcy turned her back to the corridor that lead to Lab 51, and scurried in the other direction, hoping that Cameron’s replacement would still be in the same area.

 _Bingo_.

There was Snotty McSnotty-Pants just ambling around like an arrogant, baby-faced peacock.

She wouldn’t be trying persuasion this time.

It was going to be threats all the way.

“Hey, can you help me?” she asked loudly, stepping into his line of vision.

The guard’s piggy eyes narrowed the moment he saw her.

_What a dick._

“What do you want?” he demanded, so rudely that it actually took Darcy a second to talk herself out of punching him in his stupid baby face.

“Where’s Director Fury’s office?” she asked, voice and posture brimming with command and confidence. As if she _totally_ had a right to know where Fury’s office was.

Totally.

The guards lips curled into a smirk as he gave her a scathing once over.

“None of your business,” he snapped, looking like he wanted to add a few insulting expletives on the end of that sentence.

“Well, it is my business, because I need to see him-”

“Why? Did he order coffee and a bagel?”

_Oooh, the gloves are off now, Babyface!_

“No, smartarse, he didn’t. I don’t even know if Fury likes coffee, I don’t know the guy that well,” Darcy said, trying to maintain a calm tone as she stalked closer to the guard. “You know who does like coffee though? Asgardians, man do they _love_ the bitter bean! You know who I mean, right? Thor and Loki? Princes, Gods, about twice your height, really good at fighting and fucking up people who insult their friends?” She crossed her arms, raising a challenging eyebrow at Babyface, who was starting to look a little pale around the gills.

“I know Thor’s away on a mission with myuh-myuh at the moment, so I guess I’d have to wait until he gets back before I ask him to pound your face in with that hammer…or I could ask Loki to have a crack at you. Like, I know he’s mortal and all, now, but he’s still been a total warrior-prince for about the last thousand years, so I’m guessing he could take you. Besides, he hasn’t been on a murderous rampage in nearly two years, and I bet he’d be pretty pumped at the opportunity to do a little damage. Maybe I’ll ask him tomorrow morning, over _coffee and a bagel_.”

By this point, Babyface was as white as paper, staring at her with clear horror.

It felt so good, no wonder Loki enjoyed being the villain so much.

“Well? What’s it going to be?” Darcy snapped, crossing her arms and looking as intimidating as possible, which to be honest, probably wasn’t very much at all.

Babyface stared at her for a few more seconds, clearly weighing up the benefits of not getting on the wrong side of the Asgardian Bros, before he finally conceded with a grumpy: “Fine.”

Darcy smiled smugly, watching with infinite satisfaction as he radioed for cover.

She didn’t bother making small talk while they waited for his replacement to arrive. It was pretty clear that she and Babyface would never be buds. She was more than okay with that.

So, off they went, through a warren of boringly similar-looking corridors; up some stairs, then down some stairs, then up a few more.

After about twenty minutes of this shenanigans, Darcy was thoroughly fed up and thoroughly lost.

Maybe they really _were_ heading for a cavern under the Potomac.

Finally, _finally._ Babyface led her into a brightly-lit area that looked like a cross between her dentist’s reception, and the security checkpoint at the airport.

There was a perfectly groomed team of young men and women sitting at a long desk, taking notes and making phone calls.

And there were a dozen armed guards scattered around, with a small group clustered at some sort of scanning machine. Darcy craned her neck for any sign that Fury’s office was behind there, but she couldn’t see anything, and a few of the guards were starting to look at her suspiciously.

Babyface led her to up the desk and engaged the first free receptionist he could find.

“She’s here to see Fury. No appointment,” he said, rudely pointing at her over his shoulder. He turned back to Darcy, sneering like a little weasel. “This is as far as I can take you. You’re on your own”. And then he stomped back the way they came without a second glance.

_Jackass._

She wished that she really _could_ get Thor to rough the guy up a bit, but she knew that the chances of that happening were pretty slim.

Thor was _such_ a good guy.

“Name, please?” enquired the ginger, freckled receptionist with a bland smile.

Time to get her professional bullshit on. “Um. Darcy Lewis, assistant of Dr Jane Foster. I need to speak to the Director about some of the results we’ve found today. It’s very urgent. Very secret. We felt it should come straight to the top.”

If the receptionist doubted her, he gave no sign of it. He simply nodded and began tapping away at his computer.

“I’ve notified Director Fury. He’ll be with you as soon as possible, but I must warn you that he’s very busy today. Please, take a seat Ms Lewis,” he recited politely, if a bit mechanically.

Darcy muttered a faint thanks and headed over to the small seating area, whipping out her phone the second her butt hit the uncomfortable plastic chair.

She fired up Angry Birds, knowing that she was going to be in for a long wait.

***

After three mind-numbingly boring hours, during which her butt fell asleep, her phone battery died, and her eyes almost completely dehydrated after staring at her tiny phone screen for so long, Darcy began to wonder if befriending Loki was really worth this hassle.

She really needed to pee.

Oddly, she also really needed something to drink. Water. Coffee. Tequila. Preferably in that order.

And she had missed lunch. If she had had any money on her, she would have tried to bribe one of the receptionists to grab her something from the canteen, but she only had herself and her now dead phone.

So she did the only thing she could. She shut her eyes and prayed for help, which was something she almost never did, being quite a strong agnostic. Except for that time when the scary, fire-breathing Asgardian robot thing was after her, because apparently terror made her a pretty strong believer in The Big Guy Upstairs.

After sending her heartfelt plea for freedom up into the Heavens, she waited for a few moments, certain that she would hear the voice of the receptionist calling her into Fury’s office.

But…nope. No luck.

Darcy cracked open her tired eyes, about to pull off her glasses to give them a quick wipe down when a small, suited figure suddenly charged into the waiting area.

“Coulson!”

Apparently, she had sent her plea for help to the right place.

Coulson was leaning over the receptionist desk, speaking lowly and urgently to the same ginger guy Darcy had dealt with a few hours (or was it years?) ago.

Clearly, there was something important going on, and she really had grown to like Coulson’s unique brand of dry humour, but Darcy hadn’t ever forgiven him for stealing her iPod, and she damn well wasn’t going to forgive him for ignoring her two seconds ago.

She staggered to her feet, hobbling the few metres towards the desk and feeling very much like a geriatric patient.

“Coulson, hi! What’s up?” she beamed, waving her hand frantically in direct line of his peripherals.

Coulson immediately cut off his dialogue with the receptionist, who picked up a phone and began reciting some peculiar-sounding codes. Coulson turned to face Darcy with that wry smile of his, his body not-so subtly blocking Darcy’s intent focus on the receptionist, whom she strongly suspected was calling Fury directly.

“Ms Lewis, how are you?”

“I’m alright, thanks. Just been waiting to see Fury for the past, like…three hours. His meetings must be hella long,” she complained, fishing for info. The enhanced curve of Coulson’s smirk told her that she had indeed been had by the receptionist: all that _tap tap tap_ he did on his computer had probably been to warn Fury that she was lurking in reception. So sneaky.

“Indeed. The Director is a very busy man.”

_Okay, not much to work with there, Coulson._

Getting a little desperate now, Darcy decided to play the ‘super-top-secret science stuff’ card one more time.

“Yeah, uh-huh. I’m sure. Thing is, I really need to update him on some important info from Jane, but nobody’s letting me through to him.”

Coulson stared at her mildly, and she realised that her ability to read his facial expressions was almost zero. The man was like a blank canvas.

“I’ll be speaking with the Director momentarily. Is there a message you’d like me to pass onto him on your behalf?”

_Oh, shit. Didn’t think of that!_

“Uhh…that’s really kind of you, Coulson. But - and no offense here- I’m not sure I should be disclosing this info to anyone but Fury. Jane was really specific,” she said in a rush, twisting her slightly sweaty hands together.

Coulson eyed her for a few more uncomfortable seconds before giving a little half-shrug that Darcy interpreted as ‘why the fuck not? It could be funny.’

The ginger receptionist pointedly cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Agent Coulson. The Director is ready to see you now.”

_This really is like the dentist’s!_

“Thank you. Follow me, Ms Lewis.”

So she followed Coulson like a good little puppy, letting the guards scan her for weapons and even take the casing off her phone in case there was a bomb inside. Fury clearly wasn’t taking any chances with his personal security, but she still had to work on not being offended that Coulson sailed through without getting _his_ phone checked.

Down a short and completely unremarkable corridor was an equally unremarkable door. No sign saying ‘Boss Man’s Office’ here or anything. It could have been a broom cupboard.

Coulson rapped smartly on the door and immediately let himself in. Darcy scuttled in behind him, suddenly feeling out of her depth, which was ridiculous, because this wasn’t the first time she’d crossed verbal swords with Fury.

Fury’s office was exactly how she’d expected: modern, sleek, and completely impersonal. There wasn’t a single photo-frame on his shiny glass-topped desk. Only a laptop and some folders.

No photos behind the desk, either.

Only one Director of SHIELD eyeing her with distinct wariness.

“Hey, um…Director,” she tried, thinking that a bit of deference couldn’t hurt.

Coulson settled himself over by the enormous windows, clearly intent on watching (and enjoying) their exchange.

“Ms Lewis. What can I help you with today?” Fury enquired, getting right down to brass tacks. She guessed that was why he was the boss. No small talk.

“Well, it’s about Loki-”

Fury held up one of his hands, looking weary.

“Although I’m glad you weren’t injured by Loki this morning, I have to tell you that the incident was nonetheless disturbing. Next time you may not be so lucky. I’ll be reviewing all  of the information later on with Thor and the Council. Until then, I can’t discuss it with you, and I certainly won’t be hearing any pleas for leniency.”

Darcy bristled a little bit at that. Crossing her arms, she eyed the Director suspiciously.

“Why do you assume I’d be asking for leniency? He was really mean to me.”

Fury smirked, his one eye dancing with amusement.

“Who exactly do you think gave you clearance to visit Loki this morning so that you could _apologise?”_

“Um. The nice lady in the elevator?”

Coulson stifled a laugh.

Fury waved his hand as if to suggest that their meeting was coming to an end.

_Not even close buddy._

“Well anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not here to talk about _that._ I wanted to ask if you could do something about Loki’s security clearance? See, I’ve invited him to movie night on Friday at my place, but he said that he can’t come because he’s basically on lockdown. So…can you help me out here?”

Darcy had never seen Fury look shocked before. She thought he was the sort of man who was never rattled by anything.

Judging from the current look on his face, she had been totally wrong.

Giving himself a slight shake, Fury stood up and leaned forward over his desk.

“Let me get this straight. The guy who mentally enslaved your friend Erik Selvig, among others, and attempted to take over our planet while destroying one of our key cities and killing hundreds of people in the process, got into a serious argument with you this morning that left you in tears, and you want to have him over to ‘your place’ for ‘movie night’?” Fury’s voice had risen louder and louder with incredulity throughout his speech, and Darcy suddenly felt like she was on a visit to the Principal’s office.

Coulson was totally the smug Prefect who had reported on her in the first place.

“Uh…yeah. That’s about right. I think it’s important for team-building, and co-worker cooperation,” she replied, giving Fury a winsome smile.

The Director sat back down on his nifty swivel chair with a big sigh, rubbing a hand over his head.

“So it’s probably a big decision for you to make right now and all, so I can come back tomorrow, if you want. Or the next day. Or the next. Really, whenever’s good, I’m here all the time,” she added slyly, well aware that her bubbly personality wore Fury’s patience down big time. No way would he want her dropping by on a daily basis.

Eye narrowed, Fury glanced over at Coulson, who gave a patented non-committal shrug.

_This is totally gonna work._

Fury glared at her for a few more seconds, just to get his stern disapproval across. But it didn’t matter. She knew he was going to say yes.

“Very well. _If_ the outcome of this evening’s meeting is favourable to Loki remaining with us, I will permit him access to your living quarters for ‘movie night’- _with conditions._ ” Fury added sternly, clearly worried by Darcy’s enormous grin. “First of all, his guards will escort him there and back. They’ll also stay outside in the corridor, just to be safe. And, most importantly, Thor _has_ to be present in the apartment _at all times_ when Loki is there. Understood?”

Darcy was already halfway to the door, grinning from ear to ear.

“Yes! Thanks Boss man!”

The door slammed shut behind her, and Fury looked over at his head agent with a sigh. “That’s not what I was expecting.”

Coulson offered his usual wry smile. “Sir, when it comes Miss Lewis I’d recommend always expect the unexpected.”

***

The week flew by, it was finally 'movie night', and Darcy was in total panic mode. 

When she heard a brisk knocking at her door only a few minutes after 8pm, she wanted to weep for the mess that was her bedroom. Not one article of clothing remained in her wardrobe or chest of drawers. She had tried on everything.

_Everything!_

And now Loki was here, infuriatingly on time, and she had to accept that her baby blue jumper and very old, very comfy jeans would just have to do. She didn't want to look as though she'd tried too hard to look nice.

(But she totally had.)

Like a woman on a mission, she grabbed armfuls of clothing and hastily managed to shove everything into her wardrobe (and maybe a few things under the bed, too) in less than a minute.

"Coming! Just a sec!" She cried, half jogging to the door.

She was so afraid that Loki would simply turn around and leave if he thought she wasn't in.

Even though she had pestered him several times a day all week to make sure he'd definitely show up.

She had gone to a lot of trouble for this.

After a brief fumble with the lock, she swung the door open and greeted Loki with a typically dorky grin.

"Hey! Come on in!"

With an eye-roll that would be the envy of any petulant teenager, Loki informed her, “I must enquire as to whether Thor is present.”

_Oh shit, I totally forgot about that part!_

Darcy glanced over Loki’s shoulder at the trio of guards waiting expectantly.

She smiled sweetly. “Yeah the big guy’s in the bathroom. As per usual. Come on in!” she chirped, unthinkingly grabbing Loki’s wrist and tugging him through the open doorway. She gave his guards a friendly smile as she slammed the door in their faces.

She flipped the lock quietly, just in case they realised what she’d done.

Darcy turned around to find a pleasantly bizarre sight.

Loki standing in the middle of her living room, looking a little bit unsure as to what he should be doing with himself. His social skills really weren’t too hot.

But he was.

Oh, _man._ His black jeans were tight in all the right places, and the deep ‘v’ of his dark grey sweater showed off a rather pleasing (and surprising) amount of toned chest and lickable collarbones.

She was in so much trouble.

Loki watched her intently as she walked towards him, trying not to trip over her own feet.

“Where is Dr Foster?” he enquired, his eyes flicking around the clearly empty apartment.

“Oh, um. Probably still at her place, with Thor. They’re always...um... running late.” She shrugged, well-used to Thor and Jane’s habit of having sex when they were meant to be hanging out with her. She hated being the third wheel.

Loki raised an eyebrow at her in mocking disbelief.

“Ah, but Miss Lewis, you told my guards that Thor was in your quarters, as per your agreement with Nicholas Fury,” he tisked with faux disappointment.

Darcy screwed her face up and stuck her tongue out at him.

He laughed softly, flashing his white, even teeth in a genuine smile.

 _Oh dear. My panties are toast_ , she thought miserably.

Trying to play it cool amidst the rush of heat currently engulfing her body, Darcy gave a casual shrug.

“Whatevs. I stretched the truth a bit. It’s fine. Thor’s only across the hall, it really makes no difference.”

“You _lied_ , Darcy. I must say, I expected you to play by the rules,” Loki replied, his impressed little smirk making  her feel all tingly inside.

She shook her head, mostly to try and clear the dirty thoughts out of it.

“Dude, you don’t know me at all. Jane’s the one who follows the rules. I’m cool with twisting them when necessary.”

“Good to know,” Loki remarked, giving her an appraising look.

For some reason a blush broke out on her face right then, and she realised with shame that she hadn’t even asked Loki to sit down or _anything._ They were both just standing and talking in front of her couch.

_I’m a sucky hostess. Stupid Loki, being all hot and distracting._

“Ok, so um…I’m not sure how much longer the lovebirds are going to be, so why don’t I take you on a tour?” She blurted, before her brain could catch up to her mouth.

_Oh balls, did I just propose showing Loki my apartment? Which consists of this room, the bathroom, and my bedroom?_

_Loki._

_In._

_My._

_Bedroom._

_What have I done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, not as much Loki and Darcy interaction as I had originally planned, but as usual the characters just have minds of their own! Next chapter will be all 'movie night', plus the bonus of Darcy awkwardly showing Loki her bedroom- I'm excited for that!
> 
> I can't believe this story has been going on for 2 months! Where does the time go? Thanks as ever for the feedback, it's so appreciated :)


	11. Touch My Body

_Why do I get myself into these situations? Why?!_ Darcy thought mournfully, wishing that she could have some sort of operation to prevent her from ever running her mouth off in the future.

It only ever got her into awkward and awful situations.

_Like inviting Loki to see my bedroom. Seriously. Why?_

“So, this is the living room, obviously. And…um…that’s the kitchenette thing, over there,” Darcy babbled, waving her arms around like she was an awkward windmill.

Loki glanced around the small space with mild curiousity, though she could tell that it clearly didn’t interest him in the slightest. In his defence, there wasn’t much to look at, because Darcy hadn’t bothered to do much decorating in this area of her ‘living quarters’.

Mostly because she spent most of her time either in the lab or at Jane’s much larger apartment. When she was ‘home’, she could usually be found in her bedroom, snuggled under her quite extravagant silver-grey duvet like a hibernating animal.

Darcy couldn’t remember the last time she had actually cooked something in the kitchenette area. Unless pouring cereal and milk into a bowl counted as cooking, which she doubted. When the subsidised ‘canteen’ food at the Trisk was so amazing, it seemed like a waste of time and wages to try going all Nigella Lawson.

“Yeah, so this room’s pretty boring. I haven’t decorated it much, ‘cuz we hardly ever hang out here,” she semi-apologised with a shrug.

Loki looked back at her with sudden interest. “Where do you ‘hang out’, normally?”

She smothered a grin at the way his prim voice sounded speaking good old American slang. It was too funny.

“At Jane’s, it’s way bigger and way nicer than here, y’know, because she’s the head science lady and I’m just her flying monkey,” Darcy laughed, shoving her hands in her pockets. “That’s what SHIELD thinks, anyway, Jane’s never treated me like that,” she added, not wanting to give Loki another reason to dislike Jane.

Their relationship was already tense enough.

Loki’s brows creased in an arc of confusion. “Why would SHIELD think that you are a ‘flying monkey’? Midgard does not have such a species, does it? I was given to understand than primates generally crawl or climb.”

She immediately burst out laughing at the sincerity of his question. Loki glared at her fiercely, which only seemed to make her laugh harder. When he moved as if to head for the door, she darted in front of him, putting her hands up in surrender and trying to quell her giggles.

“Dude, sorry. I’m not laughing at you, honest. ‘Flying monkey’ is just a way of saying minion, or lackey. It’s a film reference, don’t worry about it.”

Still looking a touch sulky, Loki asked, “What film? Are we to watch it this evening?”

“It’s called _The Wizard of Oz_ , it’s really good. Kind of a classic. I hadn’t really planned on watching it tonight, but we can if you want to.”

Loki looked unsure again, so in the interest of avoiding another awkward silence, Darcy decided to take the plunge. She walked to her bedroom, and paused in the doorway, glancing back at Loki.

“C’mon, I can show you a few clips of it on Youtube, and you can decide if you want to watch the rest, okay?”

He didn’t hesitate. Between one blink and the next, he was standing next to her.

_Oh wow. So pretty._

Darcy honestly couldn’t understand why Loki’s mere presence seemed to turn her into a stereotypical high school girl mooning over a boy, but there was really no denying the effect he had on her as a woman.

He made her want to throw her panties and her common sense right out the window.

He must have showered pretty recently, because his hair looked extra soft and silky, and when he edged past her into her bedroom, Darcy’s mouth began to water from the combined scent of pine trees and sandalwood.

_Yum._

She had to give herself a couple of seconds to calm the old ticker before she followed him.

“You have many books,” Loki said, with uncommon enthusiasm. He was on the far side of the room, crouched in front of her seriously overloaded bookcase, his jeans riding low enough to show a sliver of snowy white back beneath the hem of his sweater.

Darcy regretted wearing a sweater, herself. She felt uncomfortably warm, all of a sudden. She walked around to the far side of the bed and took a load off.

“Yeah, I love books. You can borrow some, if you like,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse. If Loki noticed it, he gave no indication. He was peering intently at the titles on the spines, tipping his head sideways every now and then in a way that shouldn’t have been cute on a big, bad almost-Dictator-Supreme of Earth.

It was getting harder and harder for her to reconcile 'her' Loki with the horned madman who had mentally enslaved Erik, and invited an alien army to destroy New York.

“What is this about?” Loki enquired suddenly, his long, nimble fingers managing to prise a book from the tightly-packed shelf. Darcy leant forward, peering over his shoulder.

Of course he would pick up Machiavelli. Of course.

“It was written by this guy in Renaissance Italy. He was basically outlining what he thought made the ideal ruler. It was one of my class texts in freshman year.”

Loki put _The Prince_ back in its place and began scanning the other books. “You study politics, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Yet you work with Jane Foster, a scientist of astrophysics. Are the two disciplines closely related on Midgard?”

Darcy was having a hard time trying to stay upright on the bed. Loki was _never_ this chatty, at least not with her. Sure, she could get him to talk better than most, but she had never known him to actually initiate a personal conversation before.

_Play it cool, Lewis._

“Not at all, but as part of my degree I have to do an internship with a professional connected to the university. I was sick with flu the week that we were supposed to be organising it, so by the time I got around to it, there weren’t many people left that I could work with, but one of my professors went to college with Jane, so she hooked me up.”

“How long must you work with Dr Foster for your ‘internship’?”

“Oh, it was only meant to be for a year, but I kind of like this set up I’ve got going on, so I decided to defer my degree and keep going with Jane and her crazy theories.”

Loki paused his search through the books, suddenly looking pensive. “Dr Foster’s theories are not ‘crazy’, they are in fact within the reach of possibility. She is limited only by the restraints of Midgardian technology and science.” Darcy watched unabashedly as he ran a pair of his fingers along his lips. “And perhaps the small-mindedness of SHIELD. They are not invested in the project’s outcome. They wish only to retain Dr Foster so that another organization may not have her instead,” he mused, his attention slowly drifting back to the bookcase.

“Wait, what? You really think that?” Darcy asked, after she had managed to stop a few dirty images of Loki’s lips and fingers from running through her mind.

“Indeed. It is clear from Director Fury’s-”

“No. I mean, you really think that Jane’s theories aren’t insane. That she can actually make them real?”

Loki turned to face her completely, gracefully lowering himself to sit cross-legged on the carpeted floor.

“I did not say that. I would not express undue conviction that Dr Foster will ever create a functioning wormhole. I think it is beyond the capacity of human minds-”

“Watch it,” Darcy snapped, giving his arm a sharp nudge with her foot.

Loki just grinned up at her unrepentantly. “I do not insult the human mind here present, of course,” he demurred, tilting his head at her.

Darcy glowered at him, gesturing impatiently for him to get on with it. He straightened his shoulders, his hands spreading in an open gesture as he explained himself.

“I believe that Dr Foster’s ideas have great potential as _theoretical_ models. If she existed in another realm, she would also have the means to make these theories a reality. However, as I said, she is limited by Midgardian technology. Her theories are too advanced for the era she lives in. Perhaps in another few centuries, a Midgardian will create a stable wormhole, or facsimile of the Bifrost. But it is too soon.”

Darcy just gaped at him.

“Dude! You should totally tell Jane all of that!”

Loki frowned. “Why would I do that?”

“Because! It would make her really happy to hear that you think her theories have potential! People are always saying she’s batshit crazy, and Thor said you’re, like, a _genius_ about wormholes and stuff, so it would mean a lot if you thought her ideas were good!”

“Oh.” Loki sounded so confused and surprised at the mere notion anyone might care what he thought.

Darcy grabbed fistfuls of the duvet to stop herself from leaping onto him and hugging him to death.

He probably wouldn’t like that one bit. He didn’t look like a cuddler.

“You know, if you actually tried to work with Jane and share some of your own awesomeness, I bet the two of you could _totally_ make a working wormhole.”

Loki glanced up at her with a slight grin. “Share my ‘awesomeness’?”

Darcy couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Yeah, y’know. Your awesome braininess and smarts about magic and stuff.”

Loki’s expression immediately closed off, like shutters falling to cover a window.

_Damn, Thor mentioned he was touchy about the whole magic thing! Why did I open my big mouth?!_

“So, do you want to see a bit of _Wizard of Oz_ before Thane get here?”

Loki grimaced. “What is _Thane_?”

Darcy laughed, reaching for her laptop and booting up Youtube.

“Thor and Jane. _Thane!_ It’s their couple name, loads of magazines make them up for celebrities when they start to 'date’ each other. The names are usually really ridiculous and completely unnecessary, but it’s kind of funny,” she mused distractedly, fiddling about to try and find a decent clip from the movie.

Loki was deep in silent contemplation before he dropped the bomb.

“Would our couple name be Darki or Lorcy?”

Darcy was glad to be sitting down. Otherwise she would have swooned into a dead faint like a stereotypical Victorian lady.

That would have been pretty embarrassing.

Loki watched her guilelessly from the floor, clearly interested in what she had to say.

“I kind of like Dorki, actually. It works,” she replied, amazed by the evenness of her own voice considering the weird jumps her stomach was doing.

“‘Dorky’ is a term of insult on Midgard, is it not? I have heard the guards using it in such a fashion when discussing one of the scientists,” Loki said mildly reaching for the book on her nightstand.

He was like a kid in a candy store.

“Depends who you ask. Jocks always call the smart kids dorks, but the smart kids end up winning in later life,” Darcy explained.

“ _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,_ ” Loki read, his lovely deep, dark voice making Darcy melt inside. He flipped the book over, his eyes darting rapidly over the blurb.

His eyebrows slowly rose towards his hairline. “This is a tale of _another_ wizard?”

“Dude, this is the tip of the iceberg. Wizards and magic are big tropes in Earth lit. We love that shit,” she explained. “Ooh, yay! I got a good clip, here look-”

The only thing Loki was looking at was the first page of _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows._ The man-god was completely enraptured.

_Oh J.K., nobody’s immune to your powers. Not even the God of Mischief, apparently._

But she couldn’t very well let him start with the final book in the series, now could she? It would ruin everything!

Setting her laptop aside with a dramatic sigh, Darcy rolled onto her belly and stretched over the edge of the bed until she could manage to poke Loki’s head.

He flinched, shutting the book and glaring at her.

“What are you doing, mortal?” he grumbled with half-hearted menace.

“Ooooh I’m ‘mortal’ again, am I?” she teased, daringly reaching out a hand to tug at a lock of his hair.

_Damn, it’s even softer than I’d imagined._

Although Loki wasn’t an Asgardian sort-of-god any more, his reflexes were still pretty wicked, as Darcy learned to her peril when he caught her hand in his own and shot her a shark-like grin.

“Hey! Let go!” she cried indignantly, trying to pull her hand back. Loki smirked, twisting her wrist ever so slightly and manoeuvring her hand a safe distance away from his luscious hair.

_Man, he is freakishly strong! So much for being a regular mortal!_

Maybe a sane person would have panicked at that point; one appendage trapped in the grip of a semi-god, one-time mass murderer, and all round nutcase, with no clear escape in sight.

Not Darcy.

She vowed to nibble through his fingers if she had to.

(Not in a sexual way. More of a hamster way.)

“ _Loki_. LET. GO!” She brought her other hand up to try and unravel Loki’s fingers where they had taken up residence on her wrist.

“Say please,” he replied, with a cheeky grin that she _totally_ would have smacked off his face- if she’d had a free hand to do so, obviously.

“No!”

“Tut, tut, Darcy. Your manners are appalling. I would have expected an educated Midgardian such as yourself to be a bit more polite. But no, I can’t even get a ‘please’ out of you. Shameful,” Loki taunted, shaking his head ruefully.

Darcy didn’t appreciate having her own words thrown back at her. No siree Bob.

And there was no way she was going to give Loki some flowery apology for poking his head and playing with his hair a bit. He was in _her room_ , after all!

Darcy squirmed some more, clawing ineffectually at Loki’s vice-like grip with her pathetically short nails. He just watched her with an amused, indulgent expression.

Like someone who was getting their ankles gnawed by a kitten.

“ _Arghh_! You’re an ass!” she growled.

Loki laughed. “It is pronounced _Áss_. Honestly, Midgardians these days. No education in the ancient languages at all.”

The bastard’s eyes were twinkling when he turned back to start reading the book.

_That’s it. The gloves are coming off._

Wriggling like an eel, Darcy pushed her upper body over the edge of the bed and let gravity carry her right on top of a certain God of Mischief.

Unfortunately her plan to crush Loki didn’t completely work. She only ended up slumped against his side, her head resting on his delightfully firm chest. He was stilling holding her wrist.

_Oh. This is nice._

Loki, now lying half-reclined on the floor with an expression of bewilderment, glanced down at her.

“What on Yggdrasil are you doing?”

Darcy sighed, shifting to get comfortable and accidentally digging him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Sorry. Well, I was trying to land on you and knock you over, but it didn’t really work. Seriously, what are you made of?” She reached up her free hand and poked dead in the centre of his chest, pleased at the muscle tone she found there.

“You are assaulting me, again?” Loki said drily, immediately catching her other hand in his freaky-strong grip.

“Hey! Stop doing that!” Darcy blustered, struggling to sit upright and sort of, accidentally (not), ending up sitting in his lap.

_Firm thighs. Nice._

“Then stop touching me,” Loki replied, smirking smugly at her.

Damn, but his face was close to hers. His skin was seriously flawless, like goddamn porcelain or something. And his eyelashes were so long and dark and feathery that they looked like they belonged in a mascara commercial.

Darcy  swallowed, trying to rehydrate her suddenly dry mouth as she attempted to look super indignant. “ _Ahem!_ You’re touching me as much as I’m touching you!”

Loki’s vivid green eyes, sparkling with mischief, met hers. “You wish for me to stop?”

Darcy felt as though time had paused for a few seconds as she attempted to compute the fact that she was currently straddling Loki, while he held onto her wrists in what could totally be taken as a _Fifty Shades of Grey_ type way, not to mention that they were within kissing distance, _and_ , here he was talking about them touching in that sex-voice of his.

She was in _so_ much trouble!

But some part of the universe must have been looking out for her, because before she could do something incredibly stupid, like lay one on the God of Lies, or inform him that she never _ever_ wanted him to stop touching her, she suddenly heard a loud pounding sound…and it wasn’t coming from Youtube.

It was coming from the living room.

The next second, Thor’s deep voice, booming and frantic, echoed in the apartment.

“Brother! Darcy! Open the door or I shall do it myself!”

Darcy gulped, knowing what that meant. _Door, meet Myuh-Myuh. Door, sorry you’re dead._

Loki released her wrists and managed to wriggle out from underneath her in 0.2 seconds. He leapt to his feet like a scalded cat and scowled, running a hand through his hair in a way that shouldn’t have been so ridiculously hot. “ _Fuck!”_  

Darcy thought that summed up the situation pretty well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that was eventful! It was so fun to have just pure Tasertricks for a change, without the secondary characters interfering (sorry guys!) for a brief time at least! But is Loki being all friendly and curious because he's actually starting to warm to Darcy, or because of his master-plan to charm her along with Jane in the hopes of fulfilling his bargain with Amora? Only time will tell, maybe I'll try to do a more Loki-POV chapter next time, so we can try to get into that complicated head of his.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! As ever, thank you for the feedback on the story so far- to quote Darcy, it's awesome!
> 
> To all who celebrate, Merry Christmas! I hope you have a restful and pleasant holiday :)


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